Holding Publishers Liable: What’s Wrong with the SAVE Act
Congressional efforts to punish online sex trafficking are overbroad, counterproductive and will chill free speech.
Making Dinesh D’Souza Mandatory Viewing in Florida Schools?
A Florida lawmaker who last year introduced a bill strengthening local control over public schools wants to make a right-wing documentary required viewing.
2013 YFEP Film Contest: “Video Games in the Crosshairs”
Our theme in 2013 was “Video Games in the Crosshairs.” We invited teens 19 and younger to reflect on gaming and respond to those who trumpet a single narrative about video games and media violence. We asked them to show us why gaming matters, what attracts young people to it, what role it plays in our culture and to explore [...]
No Ugly Talk: Why One Alabama Superintendent Barred High Schoolers from Watching Selma
As a number of schools across the country let students watch Ava DuVernay’s rapturously acclaimed Selma for free, one school in Alabama didn’t let its students see the movie at all. The reason? The film contains profanity and “racial slurs.”
Two Wins for Free Speech in Delaware
Good news from Delaware: One school district dropped a plan to limit students' access to certain books, and in another district the effort to alter health curriculum in accord with religious objections appears to have failed.
Professor Labeled a ‘Threat’ for Criticizing University Leadership Files Lawsuit
Last January, we reported on the story of Tim McGettigan, a sociology professor at Colorado State University–Pueblo (CSU-Pueblo) who was an outspoken critic of the administration’s financial management. After CSU-Pueblo President Lesley DiMare informed faculty and staff in December 2013 that “as many as 50 positions at CSU Pueblo” could be eliminated to compensate for a $3.3 million budgetary shortfall, McGettigan sent out a series of mass emails to the CSU-Pueblo community passionately expressing his concerns and encouraging students and faculty to peacefully protest the planned layoffs. But when McGettigan, in a January 17, 2014 email, invoked metaphorical imagery from […]
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Hebdo, Hypocrisy and Mendacity
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, there are plenty of serious questions to ask about the state of free speech in France--and everywhere else.
Charlie Hebdo and Media Self-Censorship
Many US media outlets are reporting on the Charlie Hebdo massacre--but pointedly avoiding showing the images at the center of the story.
It’s Starting to Get Chilly
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% [...]
Resisting School Censors, Students Will Stage Almost, Maine in NC
In late October, NCAC mobilized its partner organizations to pressure school officials in North Carolina's Maiden High School to reinstate a cancelled production of Almost, Maine. Now, the students will be staging a production of the play at an alternate venue.
Northwest Press Defies Apple Censorship of LGBT Content
With the recent rejection of the collected edition of the comic series Fearful Hunter from the Apple store, it looks like comic publisher Northwest Press has become another victim of Apple’s vague content policies. As Apple has become a major digital platform for comics, there has been ongoing controversy surrounding what Apple perceives as “appropriate” content for its digital shelves — specifically when it comes to the depiction of homosexuality. From the confusing initial non-release of Image’s Saga #12 to the outright removal of Sex Criminals from the iOS app, Apple has a right to establish their own content policies to reject any content that they determine to be inappropriate, but the enforcement of those policies has been inconsistent at best. Northwest Press — a publisher best known for their large and varied collection of queer comics, many of which have received critical acclaim and awards — is no stranger, though, to Apple’s policies or their inconsistency when it comes to when and how they enforce them. In the early days of Northwest Press’ entry into the digital marketplace, Apple rejected their illustrated adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest for its depictions of male nudity. As Matt […]
NCAC Joins Worldwide Secret Cinema Screenings to Protest Censorship of The Interview
On Sunday, Dec 21st, NCAC joined Secret Cinema and Spectrum to screen Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator in protest against the cancellation of The Interview. As NCAC noted in a statement regarding the cancellation, threats of violence have become increasingly successful in suppressing cultural expression. Before Sony Pictures Entertainment withdrew its film, The Interview, from all outlets of circulation and distribution, we saw London’s [...]
Neil Gaiman on Censorship and the Perception of Comics as a “Gutter Medium”
In the upcoming Winter 2014 issue of Index on Censorship magazine, political cartoonist Martin Rowson interviewed long-time free speech advocate and CBLDF Advisory Board Co-Chair Neil Gaiman on issues of censorship, comics as a gutter medium, and how graphic novels and literature are still thriving by shocking the mainstream today. With entertaining stories of their own personal experiences with censorship, death threats, and general public outrage over their works, Gaiman and Rowson reassure us that comics are definitely still alive and well and are continuing to impact the societies in which they are consumed. As Gaiman points out in a podcast of the interview, “As long as people are getting upset, a medium is not dead.” In the interview, Gaiman vocally celebrates the mainstream perception that comics are a “gutter medium.” Unlike other artistic forms, comics’ blended visual nature warrants a unique outlier position between high literature and low-brow mediums that inspires people from all walks of life to think, engage in discussion on particular issues, and converse about the world around them. “Comics get power from being a gutter medium,” Gaiman says, and it is this power which has allowed comics to become both a serious point of social […]
Censorship is Great Publicity for Fun Home and Many More
Six months after South Carolina lawmakers finally reached a sort-of-compromise following a protracted debate over the use of LGBT-themed books in summer reading programs at state colleges, one Charleston-area writer looked back last week to reflect on a bright spot in the debacle. As so often happens with any challenge or ban, Charleston City Paper contributor Leah Rhyne pointed out, legislators’ efforts against Fun Home and Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio almost certainly worked in the books’ favor as more South Carolinians opted to read them out of curiosity or solidarity. In a column at Lit Reactor, Rhyne admits that she herself was not familiar with Alison Bechdel before state legislators attempted to defund the College of Charleston’s summer reading program because Fun Home was the chosen book last year. Now, however, Rhyne owns a copy which is patiently waiting on her to-be-read shelf. Indeed, Rep. Garry Smith who sponsored the legislation likely won more than a few new readers for the book with his insistence that it “could be considered pornography.” Of course, Fun Home and Out Loud are far from the only banned or challenged books to experience this phenomenon. Rhyne pointed to an analysis of […]
Supplementation, Not Suppression: Officials in Gilbert, AZ Won’t Redact Pages from a Biology Textbook
In October, a few school board members in Gilbert, AZ attracted national attention when they voted 3-2 to yank two pages from an honors Biology textbook. Thankfully, redaction is off the table after the most recent board meeting.
Private Censorship – Fighting Suppression of Speech by Non-Governmental Actors
Government censorship in the Internet age has been a consistent focal point for free speech advocates. Recent examples of censorship by the American government can be egregious, including the curtailment of First Amendment rights through mass surveillance, overregulation of disfavored speech, criminal prosecution, and outright bans on books, movies, and websites. However, the First Amendment...
IRONY ALERT: Censor Claims “NCAC is Attempting to Censor People of Faith”
Indian River school board member, pastor, and would-be censor Shaun Fink and responded to the National Collation Against Censorship’s recently issued a letter about his demand for a censored health curriculum that would exclude discussions of homosexuality, HIV, STIs, and contraception in the most ironic way possible: He claims NCAC is trying to censor him. The letter to Superintendent Susan Bunting, which CBLDF signed alongside NCAC, the ACLU of Delaware, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, ABFFE, ALA-OIF, PEN America, and SCBWI, outlines the dangers of caving to Fink’s censorious demands: To deny students such information because of anyone’s religious or other personal belief-based objections would raise serious First Amendment concerns and, in turn, compromise our public education system and potentially expose students to unnecessary and significant health risks. During a committee meeting on Tuesday, December 2, Bunting presented the letter to Fink, who calmly responded that he thought it “ironic” that the NCAC, in fighting to prevent censorship of the curriculum based on personal, moral, or religious beliefs, was in turn “attempting to censor people of faith.” As Rachel Pacella of DelmarvaNow reports, Fink sees the letter as nothing more than a “scare letter” being used to intimidate the […]
Biology Textbook Too Factual, Violates Arizona Law?
In late October, the Gilbert Arizona Public School’s governing board voted to have two pages from a widely used honors biology textbook removed on the grounds that its discussion of contraception and common birth control methods violated Arizona law. The state law being cited is 15-115: Preference for childbirth and adoption; allowable presentation. Signed by Governor Jan Brewer two years ago, the law enumerates the ways that schools should teach and emphasize childbirth and adoption options over abortion and pregnancy prevention. As the law states: In view of the state’s strong interest in promoting childbirth and adoption over elective abortion, no school district or charter school in this state may allow any presentation during instructional time or furnish any materials to pupils as part of any instruction that does not give preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion. Since early January, members of the Gilbert school board and Superintendent Christina Kishimoto began receiving comments from groups, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, regarding the biology textbook, Campbell Biology: Concepts and Connections 7th Edition. Their concern was that the book’s subsection “27.8 Contraception can prevent unwanted pregnancy” was in direct violation of Arizona law […]
The Damned Dozens: Art Censorship in 2014
Don’t hold your breath for nipple reveals or cock shows – while artistic representations of nudes remain a regular target of censorship, the most compelling and controversial artwork in 2014 came from artists challenging social norms and exposing cultural fissures. There was the occasional use of female anatomy or children as subjects, but what each painting, photo, or mural on [...]
EFF Joins Amicus Brief in Support of Student Speech on Social Media
This week EFF joined an amicus brief in support of a college student who was expelled from school for comments he made on Facebook.
Craig Keefe was a nursing student at a public college in Minnesota when he posted several comments on his Facebook profile expressing frustration about certain aspects of the nursing program, including what he considered to be favoritism of female students. Keefe also engaged in a dispute with one of his classmates, calling her a "stupid bitch." While his Facebook profile was publicly viewable, he was off-campus when he posted his comments and did not use any school resources.
Keefe’s Facebook comments were brought to the attention of school administrators, who concluded that the comments constituted "behavior unbecoming of the profession and transgression of professional boundaries."
Keefe sued the school administrators under 42 U.S.C. §1983, a federal statute that gives citizens a right to sue state government institutions or officials for violations of individual rights under the federal Constitution. He argued that the expulsion violated his free speech and due process rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. A federal trial judge in Minnesota disagreed and ruled in favor of the school administrators.
We joined the Student Press Law Center, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and the National Coalition Against Censorship in filing the amicus brief in support of Keefe in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The brief argues that the First Amendment protects Keefe because his comments, in part, related to matters of public concern, including alleged gender discrimination in the nursing program. The brief also highlights Supreme Court precedent that states that college students have greater free speech rights than minor students, and that off-campus speech receives greater protection than on-campus speech.
While courts across the country have been struggling with determining how much jurisdiction public school officials should have over the social media lives of students, we believe that Keefe’s case involves a clear violation of his constitutional rights.
Related Issues:
A Full-Frontal Assault on Censorship: Zap Comix and the Underground Movement
Before there were unified groups dedicated to protecting creators’ rights and their freedom of speech and expression, there was the underground comix movement. In response to the 1954 Senate Subcommittee hearings, which ruled comics to be garishly colored, morally devoid pulps spreading delinquency and degeneracy across America, a unique group of creators banded together and openly (and rudely) waged a full-on war against the Comics Code and the blatant censorship, suppression, and moral policing plaguing the comic book industry of the day. One of the most significant publications to come out of this movement, R. Crumb’s Zap Comix, showcased a wide array of works by the most prolific and stylistically diverse artists at the time. Originally published in San Francisco in 1968, Zap was a space where cartoonists collaborated to produce free-form narratives about literally whatever they wanted. From the psychedelic, mind-tripping works of surfer Rick Griffin to the sexually charged and violent satirical vignettes of S. Clay Wilson, Zap was a creative space where young, passionate artists could express their innermost (and often perverse) thoughts while exercising their counterculture political and social views completely unrestrained. Using entrepreneurial and social networks that they themselves established, these creators controlled the printers […]
EFF Probes Troubling Social Media Monitoring Policies in AL and TN
Late in September, in observance of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles on Surveillance, NCAC noted thematic links between the NSA’s far-reaching surveillance tactics and those of public schools in the country. There, we observed that the underlying impulses behind surveillance on the national level and on the local level were uniform. This need to monitor and [...]
In Praise of Emotional Discomfort
The United States is proud of its freedoms, but it is also – and increasingly – a country of the easily – and proudly - offended. Being offended has become something of a political badge of honor: if I find sexist (or racist, or anti-gay) jokes appropriately offensive I am an enlightened feminist (or champion of minority groups or gay [...]
Connecticut Inmate Sues for Access to Art Books
A Connecticut prisoner is suing the state after he was denied access to three art books and another on childbirth, all of which appear to meet the guidelines for books that should be allowed under a Department of Correction policy designed to bar pornography from prisons. Dwight Pink Jr was convicted of murder along with six other charges in 2002 and is currently serving a 50-year sentence at the Cheshire Correctional Institution. Earlier this year he tried to have four books sent to him in prison: Atlas of Foreshortening: The Human Figure in Deep Perspective; Art Models 7: Dynamic Figures for the Visual Arts; Shameless Art: 20th Century Genre and the Artists that Defined It; and Gentle Birth Choices. Although a prison ban on books featuring “sexual activity or nudity” was instituted in 2011, all four of these books appear to fall into categories that are theoretically exempted from the ban: “materials which, taken as a whole, are literary, artistic, educational or scientific in nature.” Former Connecticut Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone enacted the ban in 2011 “to improve the work environment for prison staffers, especially female staffers, who might be inadvertently exposed to pornography.” Regardless of Pink’s intended use for […]
EFF and ACLU of Tennessee Team Up to Challenge Unconstitutional School District Policy
School districts across the country are grappling with how to deal with their students’ use of technology and social media. All too often, in an attempt to protect students, they end up implementing technology polices that give administrators too much power and go too far in restricting what students can do online. Williamson County Schools, a public school district in affluent Williamson County, Tennessee, is one such school district. Recently, a concerned parent, Daniel Pomerantz, brought the policy to the attention of EFF and the ACLU of Tennessee (ACLU-TN). Mr. Pomerantz was right to be concerned.
Earlier today, EFF and ACLU-TN sent a letter to the board on behalf of our client detailing our concerns. As we outline in our letter to the school board, the school district’s technology and Internet policy is troubling in a number of ways. Indeed, the policy violates the First and Fourth Amendment rights of 35,000 Williamson County students across the district's 41 schools. We teamed up with ACLU-TN to demand that the Williamson County School Board immediately suspend the unconstitutional policy.
First, the policy’s social media guidelines impermissibly restrict students’ constitutionally protected off-campus speech. Notably, the policy requires that students get a teacher’s permission before posting photographs of other students or school employees to any social media site. This applies regardless of who took the photo or where the photo was taken.
The policy also vaguely threatens that “[s]tudents are subject to consequences for inappropriate, unauthorized, and illegal use of social media.” Again, this applies to social media use both on and off campus. But the school district does not have authority to punish off-campus speech that is merely “inappropriate” or “unauthorized.” In fact, a district may only punish speech that materially and substantially disrupts the functioning of classrooms. Such off-campus speech is protected under the First Amendment, and the policy violates the First Amendment by threatening to punish social media posts that don’t cause material disruption to the classroom. A student who wanted to steer clear of violations would naturally face pressure to self-censor her posts and the First Amendment’s restrictions on state power are designed to resist exactly those chilling effects.
Second, the policy’s technology guidelines require students to consent to suspicionless searches of any electronic devices they bring to school “at any time” for any “school-related purpose.” This applies regardless of whether or not a school official conducting the search has even “reasonable suspicion” (the very lowest standard) to believe that the search will turn up evidence of wrongdoing. But according to the U.S. Supreme Court, under the Fourth Amendment, suspicionless searches of students are allowed only in very limited circumstances. The policy’s “any time” for any “school-related purpose” language goes far beyond what the Fourth Amendment permits.
Third, the policy’s network security and email guidelines subject students, at all times, to searches of any data and communications they store or transmit on the school district’s network. As above, this applies whether or not the students are even suspected of wrongdoing. The law is clear; students have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their communications and the suspicionless searches authorized by the policy unconstitutionally infringe on this expectation of privacy, again violating the Fourth Amendment.
As we state in our letter to the Williamson County School Board, “Requiring students to sign an agreement waiving constitutional protections in order to participate in fundamental school activities is not permissible.”
Now that the Williamson County School Board is aware of the shortcomings of its technology policy, we hope that it will act swiftly to suspend the policy and replace it with one that respects the constitutional rights of its students. We urge the school board to discuss our letter during its next policy committee meeting on November 3, 2014 and at its next full session meeting on November 17, 2014. Live streaming of the November 17, 2014 board meeting will be available here.
Threats of Violence Lead Feminist Critic to Cancel Speech at Utah State
Most often, when FIRE talks about “disinvitations,” the conversation revolves around colleges formally rescinding invitations to speakers because of something controversial associated with the speaker, or students protesting the speaker so much that the school either withdraws its invitation or the speaker backs out “voluntarily.” In more extreme cases, sometimes students will shout down the speaker on stage. However, a different type of disinvitation happened last week at Utah State University—thanks to a heckler’s veto of the worst kind. Feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian was slated to speak at Utah State until the university received an anonymous terrorist threat […]
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The Top 40 Free Speech Defenders of 2014
"Complacency is ever the enabler of darkest deeds." Robert Fanney recognized, as we do at NCAC, that silence and apathy lead to repression and censorship. In our 40th anniversary year, we celebrate the artists, authors, students, educators, librarians, lawmakers, celebs du jour, and yes, even corporations, who refused to remain silent on the top threats to free speech in 2014. [...]
Student Production of “Almost, Maine” Cancelled because of Same-Sex Storyline
(UPDATE: The students organized and managed to stage their performance at a local playhouse, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign.) A mere week after the legalization of gay marriage in North Carolina, a school in Maiden has decided to cancel a scheduled January production of Almost, Maine over, yes, the presence of a same-sex couple in the play's storyline. In a case [...]
Books and Content Ratings Don’t Mix
When books are challenged in schools and libraries, it’s not uncommon for complainants to invoke content ratings for other media, as in “if this were a movie, it would be rated R.” From there, some parents take what seems to be the logical next step: advocating for comprehensive content ratings for books, as we saw just this week in a Dallas-area school district. But a recent article by iO9’s Lauren Davis demonstrates once again why book ratings are not such a good idea and would inevitably lead to censorship. Davis focuses on Common Sense Media, the independent non-profit which rates all sorts of media from books to movies to music on an age-appropriateness scale from 2 to 17. Although CSM’s ratings are not displayed on products, as MPAA and ESRB ratings are on movies and video games, they and other independent ratings systems applied to books are sometimes cited by parents who want a certain book removed from a classroom or library. But CSM itself does not intend for its ratings to be hard and fast blanket rules for all children, as evidenced by the fact the each rating also covers a slightly younger age range in which “some content […]
Victory: Bogus Sanctions Against Pro-Palestinian Group for ‘Political’ Speech Dropped at Montclair State
After facing sanctions from the Montclair State University (MSU) Student Government Association (SGA), members of the Montclair Students for Justice in Palestine (MSJP) chapter are once again able to practice their free speech rights on the New Jersey public institution’s campus. On September 22, MSJP members handed out pamphlets at the group’s registered table in the MSU’s student center. The pamphlets described the group’s values, planned activities, and views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Upon receiving complaints about the overtly political and “offensive” nature of the pamphlets, SGA Attorney General Demi M. Washington sent a “Letter of Sanction” to MSJP, condescending […]
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NCAC Members Warn Waukesha Board Against “Red-Flagging” Books
As the school board in Waukesha, Wisconsin prepares to consider challenges to three books, CBLDF has joined six other member organizations of the National Coalition Against Censorship to urge that the books be retained in the curriculum and not “red-flagged” for content. In a letter sent to the board yesterday, NCAC members cautioned that such flagging “will inevitably discourage the use of these books in the classroom, depriving students of valuable educational experiences.” The three challenged books are Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher. Consideration Committees made up of teachers and school administrators already recommended making no changes to the status of the books, but the challenges have now been appealed to the school board as allowed by district policy. Looking for Alaska and The Kite Runner are both assigned reading in some classes, although students and parents always have the option to request an alternate assignment; Chinese Handcuffs is held in school libraries but not assigned in any class. According to the letter by NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin, the Waukesha school district has received requests to implement a content-flagging system for “books that deal with sex, […]
Spiked: Should Even Hate Speech Be Free Speech?
To outsiders, 21st century Britain must look like a pretty liberal country. We don’t imprison people for their political opinions. We no longer seek to ban so-called “obscene” novels, as the authorities tried to do with D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” when the unexpurgated version was first published in 1960. We got rid of our blasphemy laws in 2008. The British Board of Film Classification now okays the cinematic release [...]
PULPED!
PULP noun: A soft, wet, shapeless mass of material PULPED verb: To crush into a soft, shapeless mass A week into the international controversy over the removal and planned destruction—PULPING—of three children’s picture books by the National Library of Singapore, I read the headline Singapore halts pulping of 'pro-gay' books. The article reported that two of the books, AND TANGO [...]
Banned Broadway Gets the TADA! Treatment: Watch the Video
The TADA! Youth Theatre Ensemble brought down the house with two exclusive performances of The Banned Broadway Project during the closing weekend of Banned Books Week. In collaboration with NCAC, the TADA! teens explored controversial themes found in censored plays and musicals and selected scenes from their favorites to prepare for the big night, including Pippin, Rent, and The Laramie [...]
Riverside Schools Want Kids to Think They’re Immortal
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-, [...]
Sculpture of Male Nude Declared Porn by Some Texans
Jorge Marin's sculpture group Wings of the City has been on display in Houston's Discovery Green Park since early September. Almost predictably some viewers are objecting to the nudity of the sculptures. As usual those who object do it supposedly on behalf of the innocence of children - though Wings of the City has been exhibited internationally with no apparent damage to [...]
Another School Year Just Started: Welcome Back to the Book Censorship Wars
NCAC joined forces with author Cory Doctorow earlier this year to intervene on a challenge to his book Little Brother in Pensacola, FL. The following article by NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin, featured on Doctorow’s Boing Boing website to kick off Banned Books Week 2014, discusses the book banning epidemic that always seems to sweep the nation as kids go [...]
It’s Perfectly Normal for Books to Go Through Changes Too
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 [...]
A Machine of Paranoia: How Concerns for Student Safety May Chill Speech
NCAC has proudly signed onto the list of 13 Necessary and Proportionate principles, part of a global effort led by our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on mass surveillance. This week marks the one-year anniversary of the drafting of the principles. The list of principles proposes a set of guidelines that governments around the world should adhere to if [...]