For the last few months, the West Palm Beach Library Foundation in Florida has been hosting the travelling exhibition Banned and Burned: Literary Censorship and the Loss of Freedom from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In addition, the Library asked students in the area to make their voices heard in their first-ever essay contest. The theme? Literary censorship. The Library Foundation recently [...]
Edward de Grazia, a lawyer, professor, playwright and staunch defender of free speech died on April 11 at the age of 86. de Grazia represented famed banned writers Arthur Miller, William S. Burroughs, and Normal Mailer among others and served as counsel on important cases which ultimately led the Supreme Court to loosen restrictions on obscenity. The obscene, Mr. de Grazia [...]
Right now the Texas state legislature is considering a bill that would require college students to take the equivalent of two semesters of "courses providing a comprehensive survey in American History" in order to graduate. One of the two semesters could be Texan History. The new bill is evidently a "reinforcement" of a 1971 law mandating students take six hours of [...]
Logan Middle School student Jared Marcum took a trip to the courthouse after a confrontation over his t-shirt last week. The t-shirt boasted the National Rifle Association's logo and the words "Know Your Rights" over an image of a hunting rifle. The student was approached by a teacher in the middle of the school day who apparently asked him to [...]
"Art is a way to speak our minds!!!" one hand-drawn sign reads. "IB Art Matters!" reads another. These signs hang on the art display boards where art, done by Palmer High School's IB Art students, once hung. In response to recent censorship by the High School, students have made their voice heard in defense of their work and in support [...]
We can help with that! NCAC is concerned with censorship in all its forms, even those instances where private enterprises are within their legal rights to marginalize or ban content based on a point of view. Users engage with the Internet as a democratizing public square but, in reality, most of the online channels we rely on are controlled by [...]
Timeline On March 14, 2013 Christopher Dignam, Principal of Lane Tech High School, sent an e-mail to his staff repeating a mandate reportedly handed down by one of Chicago public schools Network Instructional Support Leaders. That mandate required schools to remove the graphic novel Persepolis from libraries and classrooms and stop teaching the book, effective March 15. When the e-mail [...]
by Svetlana Mintcheva, NCAC Director of Programs The New Speech Regulators: PayPal The Web in 2012 is far from the free speech utopia imagined at its dawn back in the early 90’s. Terms-of-service agreements, capricious moderators and automatic systems limit what we can post on Facebook or YouTube; Amazon purges its virtual shelves of offensive content (cf. CN 115). We [...]
NCAC congratulates the winners of our 2011 Youth Free Expression Film Contest, whose films were screened at the New York Film Academy on March 31st. 1st Place: The Right To Bully? by Jake Gogats and Caitlin Wolper; 2nd Place: Don't Use Your Rights to Make Wrongs by Summer Lee; 3rd Place: Expressing Freedom in 140 Words or Less by Patrick [...]
In recent years, at least 20 states have either amended existing anti-bullying and school safety laws to include language prohibiting bullying via electronic means, or have created separate statutes focusing on cyberbullying. Definitions of cyberbullying vary in the scope of behavior they cover. Some state statutes and school codes describe it as a type of criminal harassment or stalking. Others [...]
Golan v. Holder Decision In a 6-2 vote, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law that will restore copyright protection to foreign works that have previously been in the public domain in the U.S. The law was part of a global trade agreement requiring countries to protect works created in other member states unless the works’ copyright term [...]
In January 2012, when Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) students returned from a long weekend, they found teachers boxing up books, and already emptied classroom bookshelves. Literally hundreds – perhaps thousands – of books were packed up and sent to a warehouse. Some of the boxes were marked “Banned.” Students were witnessing the shutdown of the district’s acclaimed Mexican-American Studies [...]
Khury Petersen-Smith of SocialistWorker.org caught up with Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi to talk about the shady restrictions being placed on the teaching of her book in Chicago. Again, Satrapi showed her insight and savvy and aptly expressed the utter confusion and dismay we are all feeling: What is so horrible in my book that you need guidance? Am I inviting people to [...]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Michael O’Neil / Communications Director 212.807.6222 x 107 / [email protected] NEW YORK, April 8 2013-The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), the nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting freedom of thought, inquiry and expression and opposing censorship in all its forms, recently elected Jon Anderson, President and Publisher of Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing Division, to its board [...]
Did you know that in some states, localities have health and safety ordinances prohibiting tattoos and tattooing? You may be surprised to know that even New York City, birthplace of the modern tattoo -- had a ban for 36 years. Now that practically anyone--from our own mothers to elementary school teachers--is likely to have one, bans like these seem like [...]
Jon Anderson, President and Publisher of Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing Division, talks about the importance of the National Coalition Against Censorship
Tattoos and the practice of tattooing have existed for centuries and across many cultures. In the U.S. 1 in 4 adults under 50 had a tattoo, According to a 2006 study by Northwestern University; a 2012 poll conducted by The Harris Poll found that 20 percent of adults of any age have at least one tattoo. The attitude toward tattoos in American culture has shifted considerably in the last twenty years: today, tattoos are second only to ear piercing as a mainstream body modification.
This morning's news feeds boasted two stories that grabbed our attention, in particular because they dovetail so perfectly with the recent controversy in Chicago Public Schools surrounding Persepolis. One is about drama that has ensued after the California DOE decided to include more gay-themed books in its school curricula. This brings up vital curricular and cultural issues, but for the purposes [...]
