Come one, come all! We're inviting everyone--students, teachers, librarians, authors, anyone with a love for free speech and good books-- to participate in our Youth Free Expression Project film contest in a new way: by casting a vote for the People’s Choice Award.
Despite recommendations by a library committee that the book be retained, Alan Moore's Neonomicon was pulled from library shelves in Greenville, South Carolina. The library services director who ultimately made the decision called the book "disgusting" in an interview with The Greenville Times.
NCAC reached out quickly and effectively on a challenge to Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, a summer reading assignment for 9th graders in the Traverse City school district. A school board reconsideration committee had already supported removing the book, but the school board ultimately voted 4-3 to retain the book.
Several works being taught in AP English classes in Katy, TX were removed or replacafter complaints. Fight Club by Chuck Palaniuk, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley and Ernest Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants" were among the objectionable titles.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Michael O’Neil, NCAC Communications Director [email protected] or 347 788 1646. Yale University’s first joint campus is set to open in Singapore this August, and the Ivy League school needs to answer some tough questions about how its educational mission, which includes a tradition of respect for academic freedom, and freedom of thought and expression, can succeed [...]
Interviews from the National Coalition Against Censorship's 2012 Free Speech Matters Annual Celebration of Free Speech and Its Defenders.
NCAC and partner organizations sent a letter voicing our concerns over a push to remove books from classrooms in the Springfield School District in Massachusetts. Among those objected to are Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and The Other Wes Moore.
NCAC and nine partner organizations came together on a Kids' Right to Read Project letter to the Guilford School District in Greensboro, NC. The letter advised the district to stay strong and continue to follow its policies in the face of recent complaints over "The Handmaid's Tale", "Cat's Cradle" and other texts used in AP English classes. Parents in the district have complained that the texts "denigrate Christianity."
Don’t mess with Abbe Klebanoff from the Lansdowne Public Library (PA). She encouraged teens to create a music video called "Read It" to Michael Jackson's "Beat It," and posted it on YouTube. What followed was predictable—Sony objected and took it down, claiming copyright infringement.
Art Institutions Facing Controversy: fear, self-censorship, and the commitment to curatorial and artistic freedom. Thursday, Feb. 14, from 5:30-7 PM in Murray Hill Suite, 2nd Floor at the Hilton New York.
The Rocklin School District in California reversed an earlier decision to remove Stephen King's "Different Seasons", a short story collection which contains "Shawshank Redemption" and "Apt Pupil" among others. NCAC sent a letter to the district urging them to keep the book.
Issue 117, Fall 2012 Sex is, as the late Justice William Brennan said, “a great and mysterious motive force in human life [which] has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.” However, from 19th century vice societies and public morality campaigns to contemporary attacks on pornography, Americans have been at war over sexual expression [...]
Issue 117, Fall 2012 Ah, sex. We love to think about it, we also love to condemn it. Censors are second perhaps only to pornographers in the amount of time they spend talking about sex. NCAC was launched in the wake of a 1973 landmark obscenity case, Miller v. California, and to this day censorship of sex is the biggest [...]
The Supreme Court has played a major role in perpetuating our cultural ambivalence about sexual expression, on the one hand by affirming that sexual expression is constitutionally protected – at least for adults – and on the other by sanctioning government censorship of otherwise lawful sexual expression in the name of “protecting” minors. The result hasn’t always been pretty. Can [...]
Issue 117, Fall 2012 NCAC mourns the passing of Alan Reitman at age 91, on July 8, 2012, after a lifetime of dedication to the fight for free expression. Alan was one of the founders of NCAC and served on its board for many years, in addition to over 40 years of distinguished service with the ACLU. NCAC is grateful [...]
Issue 117, Fall 2012 Censorship is all about controlling what people think and do by regulating what they know and say. Nowhere is this more evident than in the never-ending battles over speech about sex, sexuality and reproduction. As noted in this issue, kids are the main target of censorship of sexual content. “Abstinence-only-until-marriage”programs in public schools eliminate discussion of [...]
Issue 117, Fall 2012 Join NCAC for our Free Speech Matters: Annual Celebration of Free Speech and Its Defenders on Monday, November 12, 2012 at Tribeca 360° in Manhattan. Visit ncac.org/benefit for rsvp and sponsorship information, or email [email protected]. A Wisconsin state park cancelled the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s play, The Bible: Complete Word of God, Abridged, after criticism that the [...]
Kids' Right to Read was joined by the American Library Association in defense of Stephen King's Different Seasons which has been challenged in a school library in Rocklin, CA. A parent objected to a rape scene in the novella "Apt Pupil" and wants the book removed.
Kids' Right to Read responded to the removal of Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate from classrooms in Nampa School District in Idaho. Informal complaints led the school to ban the book, despite the fact alternative assignments were offered and no formal process had been followed.
Censorship of Betsy Schneider's "Quotidian" in response to complaints jeopardizes the institution's integrity and commitment to artistic freedom.
NCAC joined with the American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in writing a letter of support to the King County Library System for their response to a recent challenge of Hero Heel 2, a manga title intended for mature audiences.
Books get pulled from library shelves and school curricula all the time because someone complains about the language they contain or the topics they address. Tell us about a time when parents, a teacher or some other adult was distressed at what you or someone you know were reading -- and wanted to take it away. You can also submit [...]
Erin reads from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by legendary YA pioneer and Free Speech Defender Judy Blume.
Heather reads from Speak, by NCAC 2011 Free Speech Matters awardee Laurie Halse Anderson, at the Brooklyn Book Festival
Susanne, a volunteer with the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, reads from Slaughterhouse Five to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more videos about free expression.
Walt Whitman reads from Leaves of Grass at the 2012 Brooklyn Book Festival to help celebrate Banned Books Week. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos about free speech.
A reading from The Giver to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival.
Liz reads from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume to help celebrate Banned Books Week with the National Coalition Against Censorship
Marjorie Heines reads from Molly Bloom's Soliloquy in Ulysses by James Joyce to help celebrate Banned Books Week.
https://ncac.org Francisco reads from Lady Chatterly's Lover to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Gehad reads from Looking For Alaska to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Michael reads from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Claudia reads from The Family Book to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Sophie reads from Lolita to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Arlene reads from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Clara reads from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Matthew reads from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Rachel reads from James Joyce's Ulysses to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
https://ncac.org Zara reads from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian at the Brooklyn Book Festival to help celebrate Banned Books Week. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout the week!
https://ncac.org Sharae reads from Fifty Shades of Gray to help celebrate Banned Books at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Subscribe to our channel or visit NCAC online for more readings throughout Banned Books Week!
