Ellen Hopkins, author of numerous Young Adult titles as well as most recently, the Banned Books Week Manifesto is being censored in Norman, Oklahoma. Hopkins was scheduled to speak at Whittier Middle School on September 22nd about her experiences as an author writing about real life issues facing youth today. However, her talk was reportedly cancelled by the district's superintendent [...]
As Benjamin Franklin rolled over in his grave, the Pennsylvania State Senate discussed Wednesday night whether all of Philadelphia's 54 libraries will have to close on October 2. Mayor Michael Nutter's Plan C, or "Doomsday," budget will start to go into effect on Friday unless enough state senators vote to pass a 1% sales tax hike. The plan, which the [...]
The deadline has been extended for our contest Free Speech in Schools: Does it Exist? Students 19 and younger are encouraged to film their response in 4min or less for the chance to win up to $1000 and a scholarship to the New York Film Academy. See more details on our website ncac.org or even apply online now! According to [...]
On Wednesday, September 9th , the Supreme Court reheard arguments in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (see our coverage of this case here and here). The issues addressed in the rehearing were much broader than the question whether Hillary: The Movie, a 90-minute documentary attacking Hilary Clinton, may be considered electioneering communication. As Marjorie Heins of [...]
Earlier this year, we covered Citizens United v. FEC, a Supreme Court case on the constitutionality of federal election laws. As we explained in April, “the Court, among other things, needs to determine whether Hillary: The Movie, a 90 minute documentary about Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign with a decidedly conservative bias, is considered an “electioneering communication,” or a political editorial [...]
In August, 2007, Debbie Almontaser was the interim principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, an Arabic language public high school she had worked with the New York City Department of Education for two years to establish. Though the school was secular (a point Almontaser sought to emphasize by naming the school for the famous Christian Lebanese poet), [...]
Touch every book. Char every page. Burn every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible... The NCAC is excited to present the Banned Books Week 2009 Manifesto written by Ellen Hopkins, author of several verse novels on teenage struggles, including Crank, Burned, Impulse and most recently, Tricks. We here at the NCAC want to know what you are doing this year [...]
The arrest of Zach Hyman’s nude model during a photo shoot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was predictable in spite of the irony of the location. Whereas marble and oil nudes are usually left at peace (not always though: art containing nudity is a frequent target of censorship), a living woman posing naked for an artist is guilty of [...]
In April we reported on a book challenge after two parents called for the removal of Maureen Johnson's The Bermudez Triangle and Ceicly von Ziegesar's Gossip Girls: Only in Your Dreams from the Leesburg Public Library. In June, we were excited to offer an update full of good news. Yet somehow we are still holding our breath... On Monday the [...]
The Brooklyn Public Library trusts you to form your own opinions about any controversial and provocative content that you would find in Beloved, Hard Candy or Mein Kampf. However, apparently they feel the need to protect you from racially insensitive material in the cartoon from almost 80 years ago TinTin Au Congo. The NYTimes today reports that [...]
The Effingham Helen Matthes Library Board in Effingham, Illinois voted unanimously to deny a request to censor Living Dead Girl, a novel by Elizabeth Scott. Local parent, Amy Hibdon formally requested that the book be removed from the library, or at least the teen section, after her 15-year-old daughter checked out the book and was reportedly upset by the content [...]
The NY Times reports today that Yale University Press has not only decided to remove the controversial Danish cartoons of Muhammad from "Cartoons that Shook the World" by Jytte Klausen; they have decided that all images of Muhammad have to go on the recommendation of a group of "diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism". "...they suggested that the Yale [...]
Being so busy with campaigns promoting “freedom and democracy” in the Middle East and central Asia, it’s hardly surprising that most of us here in the United States are unaware of an archaic and abominable practice that continues here at home - book banning. The Kids’ Right to Read Project (KRRP), a collaboration of NCAC and the American Booksellers Foundation [...]
While Congress has been busy protecting animals from cruelty at the expense of the First Amendment (See U.S. v Stevens) elsewhere it has been legislating away the First Amendment rights of animal cruelty protesters to protect corporate profits. Last month, a federal court in Northern California heard oral arguments on a motion to dismiss in United States v. Buddenberg, the [...]
Judge Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate today as the newest member of the Supreme Court, replacing Justice David H. Souter who retired in June. She becomes the 111th member of the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the third woman and first Hispanic to serve on it. What does her confirmation mean for the First Amendment? See our [...]
Having trouble accessing a website? Suspect it might be more than just a faulty connection or technical malfunction? Visit Herdict.org, a website designed to track reports of censored web sites around the world. There, you can report anonymously that a site is inaccessible and see if other people are having the same problem. There is no way to determine whether [...]
Once again, a software company reveals its power over our access to information by making a dumb decision. This time, Apple rejected a dictionary application, Ninjawords, because it included words Apple deemed inappropriate. According to an interview by John Gruber with Ninjawords developer Phil Crosby, Apple refused to upload Ninjawords to the iTunes store until a number of “objectionable” [...]
The New York Times ran an article this past Saturday, "Voices From Above Silence a Cable TV Feud", about how GE and NewsCorp enforced a kind of "cease-fire" – otherwise known as corporate censorship - on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly. While I’ve always found the battle between Olberman and O’Reilly to be exhausting (though admittedly entertaining), the [...]
Amazon.com is facing a class-action lawsuit for remotely deleting two George Orwell titles, 1984 and Animal Farm, from all its customers’ Kindles. Justin Gawronski, 17, a Michigan high school student, and Antoine J. Bruguier, a California Kindle user, claim that Amazon had no right to remove the books from their wireless e-book devices. The knowledge that Amazon has that “technological [...]
Health education that consists of only an abstinence-only message has disturbing consequences. By depriving teenagers of access to information about their health and bodies in schools, it makes them vulnerable to STD/s and unwanted early pregnancies. The problems of censoring sexual health education are reflected in a recent report released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The report [...]
When I first heard that Fred Phelps, the famous anti-gay activist, planned to protest the funeral of one of the modern heroes of journalism, the late Walter Cronkite, I thought I had missed something in The New York Times obituary. I combed through it again, revisiting those classic moments in broadcast history that have been replayed over and over: the [...]
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed this week in an important Supreme Court free speech case, NCAC, joined by the College Art Association, warned that a law banning depictions of animal cruelty violates the First Amendment right to free speech, and the exemption it provides for work with “serious value” rings hollow, given the long history of censorship of disturbing or unpopular [...]
This morning NCAC woke up to a mailbox full of hundreds of complaints against AT&T’s blocking access to img.4chan.org. The mass outrage over AT&T’s action had by that time also reached the company and led to the rapid unblocking of the site. AT&T denied any attempt to censor based on content and issued the following statement justifying the block as [...]
Kids’ Right To Read’s Jamie Chosak interviewed Francesca Lia Block, author of many young adult novels, including Baby Be Bop, which the Milwaukee branch of the Christian Civil Liberties Union is currently calling for the right to publicly burn West Bend Public Library's copy. When asked about responding to challenges, FLB said: I keep writing. To me that is the [...]
In May, the Kids’ Right to Read Project reported on the censorship of Jayson Tirado’s poem, "Diary of an Abusive Stepfather", after Landis Intermediate School principal, Don Kohaut, literally ripped the poem out of the school's only copy of the nationally-acclaimed anthology, Paint Me Like I Am. One mother of a thirteen year-old student had raised concerns over the age-appropriateness [...]
The fight continues in Wisconsin where parents are calling to ban (and possibly burn) books from a public library. This time they face a library board friendlier to their cause, now that the four pro-First Amendment members weren’t reinstated. CNN reports that parents who object to a list of 82 books in the young adult section, including The Perks of [...]
The phrase “safe libraries” should always raise a red flag. Proponents for “safer libraries” argue that some information is inherently dangerous, but the First Amendment is designed to ward off the suppression of information. In the case of internet filters intended to block sexually explicit material, librarians and community members have to ask the questions, “Safe for whom?” and “Safe [...]
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is demanding that Los Angeles Opera overhaul the Ring Festival L.A. planned for next year, calling Richard Wagner a, “Nazi composer.” He is, of course, wrong. The Nazi's may have used Wagner, but Wagner was already long dead. Yet, the issue remains, Wagner held rather despicable anti-semitic views (along with the majority of his [...]
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Kids’ Right to Read Project Director Jamie Chosak interviewed author Chris Crutcher about his experience as one of the most challenged young adult authors of all time. Here’s an excerpt: Kids’ Right to Read Project: Challenges against your books have been raised over numerous “themes” and issues.” Some commentators have identified efforts to ban “pro-gay literature” as an increasing trend. [...]
The Kids' Right to Read Project Interviews Author, Chris Crutcher
A court Tuesday upheld the University of Colorado’s firing of professor Ward Churchill after controversy arose from his essay which referred to victims of the 9/11 attacks as “little Eichmanns.” Judge Larry Naves ruled that Churchill would neither get his job back nor receive financial compensation. According to the LA Times, in ruling, the Judge stated “I am bound by [...]
The Kids’ Right To Read Project sent a letter today to the Chair of the Litchfield District’s School Board opposing the removal of several titles from Campbell High School’s upper-class elective “Love/Gender/Family” unit. KRRP also interviewed Andy Towne, a member of the Class of 2007 at Campbell High School after he authored an op-ed for The Nashua Telegraph about the [...]
Campbell High School story flap selling its students short
By ANDY TOWNE
I recently had the chance to watch The Education of Shelby Knox, a documentary chronicling a high school student’s campaign to bring alternatives to abstinence-only education to her school in Lubbock, Texas. A lot happens in eight years. Shelby has since graduated from both high school and college; she is now 23 years old and living in New York City. [...]
The Kids' Right To Read Project sent a letter today to the Leesburg Public Library Advisory Board applauding their decision to keep two challenged books on the shelves in the Young Adult section without labeling or restricting them in any way. We also urged the Board to uphold its decision during an appeals process. Libraries serve every member of the [...]
The removal of "Walking Man" from the public space in front of the Anton Art Center because of individual complaints is a disturbing violation of both the artist's free speech and the rights of the public to have access to a wide variety of artistic expression ("Mount Clemens has gallery move nude statue indoors," June 23).
Kids’ Right to Read Project Director Jamie Chosak interviewed author Maureen Johnson about her experiences with censorship, including the recent challenge against her book, The Bermudez Triangle, in Leesburg, Florida. Here’s an excerpt: The Kids’ Right to Read Project: Challenges against The Bermudez Triangle have focused on ‘homosexual themes.’ Some commentators have identified this as an increasing trend. Would you [...]
