“FIT endorses the right of artists to freely express their views through their work” reads a sign at the beginning of a student photography show on display in one of the institute’s lobbies. The sign also warns that artwork may be inappropriate for some people. That didn’t stop the Dean from requesting that a photograph by Jessica Chow be covered [...]
Violence against those who create and disseminate controversial words and images is not new. But for the last couple of centuries, commitment to free speech has trumped fear of violence in Western liberal democracies. As late as 1989, Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses continued to be published and read in the face of a fatwa issued against its author and in the face [...]
Violence against those who create and disseminate controversial words and images is not new. But for the last couple of centuries, commitment to free speech has trumped fear of violence in Western liberal democracies. As late as 1989, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses continued to be published and read in the face of a fatwa issued against its author and in [...]
The Rancocas Valley School Board in Mt. Holly, New Jersey, chose to remove one of the three challenged books at its meeting on May 4. Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology and two other books were challenged because they appear on a list of books on GLBTQ themes created by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). The objectors [...]
Temecula city management, which was responsible for removing a nude artwork from an exhibition in January, has decided not to create a written policy for the selection of artworks in city-owned exhibition spaces. Instead, Temecula’s Community Services Director Herman Parker (or someone designated by him) will partake in the selection process. NCAC Director of Programs, Svetlana Mintcheva, says: It is [...]
Scott Southworth, the district attorney of Juneau County, Wisconsin, is threatening to prosecute teachers who comply with a new state law that requires sex education courses to include “medically accurate, age-appropriate” information, including information on contraceptives. Southworth claims the law “promotes the sexual assault of children,” “[u]ndermines parental authority,” “requires school districts to condone controversial sexual behavior,” and “provides access [...]
This is a familiar debate. In 1948, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that graphic crime stories and reports corrupt minors and contribute to juvenile crime and anti-social behavior.
The 3rd Circuit has agreed to rehear two seemingly contradictory online student speech cases decided in February (see here for more about the cases). It has vacated the previous opinions and all members of the court will hear arguments in both cases on June 3. The cases were decided based on the criterion of whether the speech was likely to [...]
In a much anticipated decision, the Supreme Court yesterday struck down a federal statute making it a crime to create, sell or possess “a depiction of animal cruelty.” In the 8 – 1 opinion, the Court characterized the law as "a criminal prohibition of alarming breadth," because of its potential to criminalize a vast array of legally protected expression, including [...]
Last week, a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ban on the advertising of alcohol in college newspapers. The case involved a challenge to the Virginia Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission’s expansive ban on the advertising of beer, wine and mixed drinks in student-run publications throughout the state of Virginia. Beyond the obvious economic implications (the newspapers [...]
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court dealt a legal setback to supporters of “net neutrality.” The court ruled (Comcast v. FCC) that the FCC does not presently have the authority to control an ISP’s network management practices and therefore cannot require Comcast (one of a small number of powerful corporations whose networks comprise the Internet) to treat all internet content equally. [...]
Last summer, we reported that the ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) were mounting a creative challenge to the constitutionality of gene patents, a questionable practice which till now was supported by U.S. Government policy. The US Patent and Trademark Office has regularly granted property interests in certain types of living organisms and their constituent parts, including genes, the [...]
One March 19, 2010 the FDA issued a broad set of regulations directly restricting tobacco companies’ ability to advertise and promote their products. The regulations were issued following President Obama’s signing of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act last June, which granted the FDA extensive authority to create such regulations. The landmark legislation negates the Supreme Court’s 2000 [...]
The cancellation of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi by Tarleton State University, under pressure from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and others, is an affront to academic freedom and First Amendment principles of free speech. The play was denounced by Tarleton’s president, Dominic Dottavio, who called it “crude and irreverent.” Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst opined that [...]
“[W]hen a public school purports to allow students to express themselves, it must respect the students’ free speech rights,” Justice Alito said in an opinion this week. His words came in a powerful dissent to the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a case involving students’ musical choice for the graduation ceremony. Justice Alito, the conservative judge who took his [...]
On March 27 from 1-4 at the New York Film Academy, NCAC partners with Kahlil Almustafa, Emily Kunstler, Reel Works, and Global Action Project for an afternoon of making connections and exploring the power of youth-made media. Stop by to view the winning films from our annual Film Contest (Free Speech in School - Does it Exist?)! Hip hop poet [...]
Last Friday the Texas Board of Education voted along party lines to approve a new school curriculum that will, in effect, rewrite history. The new social studies curriculum will address what one board member referred to as a “skewed” history with a “liberal bias.” Although the proposed changes may individually seem relatively minor, they are not innocuous. For example, the [...]
In February, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued contradictory opinions involving online student speech. The losing sides of both Layshock and Blue Mountain are asking the Court to rehear their cases before a full court. Both parties agree that the two opinions, issued the same day, seemingly contradict each other. Even the winning parties agree that the conflicting rulings [...]
Join us at the New York Film Academy for our second Youth Voices Uncensored event on March 27th from 1-4pm for an afternoon of youth films, fun prizes, and great performances! Meet the winners of the 6th Annual YFEN film contest and make connections while exploring the power of youth-media. It's FREE and open to the public! Who: National Coalition [...]
Concerned because the deletion of government emails has hampered investigations into possible official wrong-doing, NCAC joins OpenTheGovernment.org in requesting Congress to act to insure the preservation of government records. "Concerned with government openness and accountability," the letter reads, "the undersigned organizations respectfully request ... hearings on the apparent destruction of e-mails in the Department of Justice to determine how the [...]
The United States has a tradition of generally broad protection of freedom of speech, which has persisted in the Internet age. Thus American courts have struck down most laws attempting to limit content on the Internet, including provisions of the Communications Decency Act restricting indecent speech on the Internet (in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997)) [...]
Matthew Sottile and Dawson Burke of Connecticut will “Bike for Progress.” On April 5, 2010, the two high school friends will begin their trans-America journey, cycling from Baltimore, Maryland to Canon Beach, Oregon in support of free speech. All pledges and sponsorship for “Bike for Progress” will be generously donated to NCAC. The cross-country trip has been in the works [...]
The limitations on the speech of public school teachers borders on the absurd. Earlier this month, a federal court ruled that a Mississippi special-education teacher was not entitled to any First Amendment protections for complaining to the school principal that another teacher had used corporal punishment on an autistic child. A few days after making the complaint, the teacher was [...]
Last week, NCAC and EFF protested YouTube's removal of work by acclaimed video-artist Amy Greenfield. NCAC applauds YouTube for so promptly responding to our letter and restoring Amy Greenfield's videos to its site (there are still some technical glitches but we are assured these will be taken care of soon). We are glad the company affirms that creativity and free [...]
Representations of nudes in painting, sculpture, and photography frequently become subject to controversy. The law, however, is clear: simple nudity (that is nudity outside of a sexually explicit situation) has full constitutional protection. (That does not mean that public officials are always aware of this as a current case in Temecula, CA, testifies.) But what about a live [...]
We can now add swimwear catalogs to the list of controversial iPhone apps, which already includes a Kama Sutra ebook, NIN, and the dictionary. In an effort to keep out anything "overtly sexual" from iPhone apps, Apple removed Simply Beach's catalog (Simply Beach is an online beachwear retailer). Apparently, women in bikinis press Apple's red-alert sexuality button (or [...]
Last week, two public universities struggled with how to respond to student outrage. Eleven students were arrested at the University of California at Irvine for disrupting the speech of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. Meanwhile, the University of Oregon has been exploring ways of expelling Pacifica Forum, a “hate group” (according to the Southern Law Poverty Center) that has upset many [...]
NCAC joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in filing a friend of the court brief calling for the reinstatement of Ward Churchill, who was fired from his tenured position at the University of Colorado after writing a controversial essay. The case became highly politically charged after public officials began to call for [...]
The Culpeper County, VA school system received national media attention three weeks ago when school officials said that The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition by Anne Frank would no longer be taught in middle school classrooms. A parent had contacted the school board because the uncensored version of the diary, used in an eighth grade English class, [...]
NCAC, with a little help from our friends, sent a letter urging Sugarloaf School in Summerland Key, FL, to retain Judy Blume's Forever in the school library after the parents of one student objected to the book's sexual content. The parents have requested its removal from the library claiming that Forever contains “a distorted view of sex, promiscuity, and is [...]
In January, artwork by Jeff Hebron, which had been selected for inclusion in a Temecula, CA juried art exhibit (Visual Expressions 2010), was removed upon the request of the City Management. The problem: the painting depicted a nude figure. The gallery where the piece was to be shown is a city-owned space, which is why there are serious [...]
The school board at Council Rock School District in southeastern Pennsylvania decided last week that teachers may continue to use R-rated movies in class. Their defense of the policy comes after an extended controversy that began last fall when parent Diana Nolan asked that all R-rated films be removed from high school curricula. Parents were required to sign permission slips [...]
In the children’s book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, the title character answers the question of the title with, “I see a red bird looking at me.” For one member of the elected Texas Board of Education, the bird’s color could have been confirmation of her suspicion that the picture book promoted Communism. But then again, Board [...]
On Thursday the Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued two seemingly contradictory opinions involving student speech. Both cases involved students who had created fake online profiles parodying the principals at their respective schools. Both students were punished by school officials for their speech. Despite the similarities, however, the Court ruled one student’s rights had been violated while denying relief to [...]
A Jefferson County Public School student was banned from mentioning the name of his website in a Search Engine Optimization class offered through the school's online continuing education program. His URL: www.olbastard.com. His context: he sells bastard files. He attempted to post comments to the online forum, but because his URL was the subject of his questions, his posts were [...]
Robert Frost Elementary in Washington State canceled the touring theatre-troupe Studio East's production of the Emperor's New Clothes and demanded several edits to Snow White and the Black Forest due to fears that students would imitate the bad behavior of some of the characters. The plays, according to the school, violate its Human Dignity Policy. NCAC, in collaboration with several [...]
LIGHT OF THE BODY (segment) from Amy Greenfield on Vimeo. Google has taken a firm position on censorship in China, yet, ironically, Google willingly and actively censors. It censors so as to conform to local laws, but it also censors deliberately and voluntarily by restricting speech on, for instance, YouTube (fully owned by Google). A recent example of the breadth [...]
School officials at Menifee Union School District temporarily removed copies of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition for containing graphic terms like “oral sex" after a parent complained. (But as it turns out, the dictionary did not even contain this term...) Nonetheless, NCAC executive director Joan Bertin explains, Removing a book should be based solely on its educational value, not on [...]
Athey Creek Middle School in West Linn, Oregon has taught its eighth grade students a First Amendment curriculum for ten years, addressing the controversies surrounding commonly-banned books and reading the books in class. The unit drew no major criticism until early last month, when librarian and teacher Michael Diltz faced ire from several parents. He had written two common “obscenities” [...]
In an impassioned speech at the Newseum in Washington on January 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacked countries who limit the free circulation of peaceful dissent and religious ideas on the Internet and those who use the Internet for the "darker purposes" of promoting violence and making sexual advances on minors. She also spoke about the increasing concern over [...]