Views on censoring the bard 451 years later from a Shakespeare-lover and free speech fighter. Happiest of birthdays to my favorite Elizabethan fellow and bawdiest of bards, William Shakespeare. It’s no secret that this famed playwright has taken heat over the years for his spicy language. His plays boast of themes of sexuality, anti-Semitism, violence, and homosexuality; but do these [...]
A group of Florida students were set to perform at the Florida State Thespian Festival in Tampa. They did-- but outside the venue.
An exhibit of dolls at the Long Beach library was deemed too controversial because it included a depiction of police brutality. The library decided to go on with the show; NCAC offers some guidelines for curators who are faced with similar controversies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, NCAC has compiled a list of 5 scandalous couples that rattled more than just the bedpost. In fact, their romances sparked debate about the role of free expression, censorship, and First Amendment rights—some even thousands of years later. NCAC hopes that your Valentine's Day is as passionate and romantic—though maybe not as dramatic—as these forbidden affairs of [...]
Black History Month is as good a time as any to remember that some of the most frequently banned, censored or challenged books were written by African-American authors.
And I’m not talking about the frosty weather hitting New York City this week. A new report by NCAC coalition member PEN American Center, “Global Chilling: The Impact of Mass Surveillance on International Writers” finds that government surveillance in democratic countries is chilling free speech, driving novelists, editors, poets, and journalists to self-censor their work. The numbers are particularly frightening: 75% [...]
Author John Green’s work has once again come under the censorship chopping block, this time in Riverside, California. His award-winning love story, The Fault in our Stars, was taken out of middle school libraries because the novel’s subject matter involves two terminally-ill teens who use crude language and have sex. “I just didn't think it was appropriate for an 11-, [...]
Sex-Ed was always and will always be the proverbial Catch-22 of every pre-teenager and teenager’s education. They want to know about their bodies: how it works, what’s in store for the future, and whether what they are going through is normal. But we need to face the facts: it’s an awkward subject that no one wants to discuss. Luckily, author [...]
Like family heirlooms passed down through generations, the same books are often retained in school curricular for student after student to read and reflect upon. These classic novels undoubtedly serve to develop the mental and emotional capacities of their readers; they are, after all, “classics.” But even the rebellious Holden Caulfield and the daring Winston Smith can fail to transcend [...]
