Free Speech or Blasphemy? Censorship or Discretion? Click here for a statement from NCAC on the controversy surrounding the Mohammed cartoons, featured in Censorship News #101. We are presenting here a selection of the material published on the issue, and reports of incidents of censorship in connection with the cartoons. Resources An extraordinarily thorough summary of the controversy is [...]
Rick Piltz, a Senior Associate at the Climate Change Science Program who resigned in March, has charged that political officials have been editing scientific reports dealing with climate change. His charges have focused specifically on Philip Cooney, the chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Mr. Cooney is a lawyer who previously worked as a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute.
Recently, Principal Cheryl Alligood of Wellington High School in Wellington, Florida, confiscated copies of the school newspaper, The Wave, over an article about sex. She claims she did "what was best for the student body." We think her decision taught students the wrong lesson. School papers provide a critical forum for expression and discussion for students. Unlike the classroom, students make [...]
Ohio is the latest state to encounter proposed legislation to adopt an "academic bill of rights" for colleges and universities. ...
by Ward Churchill When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm ...
Earlier this month, Hamilton College, in Clinton, NY, cancelled a talk by University of Colorado Boulder Professor Ward Churchill because of threats of violence...
by Ward Churchill In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite [...]
To the Editor: If Rachel Donadio ("Is There Censorship?" Book Review, 12/19/04) is correct that the "c-word" is occasionally overused, the main example this holiday season is the absurd claim that using generic phrases like "happy holidays" and "season's greetings" constitutes censorship of "Christmas" and "Christians." More importantly, however, Donadio's overly restrictive view of censorship misses the big picture. The reader is left unaware of the assault on teaching evolution, [...]
A political satire entitled Richie Bush by cartoonist Peter Kuper, of Mad Magazine and 'Spy vs. Spy' fame, is one of two stories from the Eastern European comic anthology Stripburger that has caused several books from a recent shipment to the port of Charleston to be seized by U.S. Customs.
Copyright legislation grows increasingly restrictive with remarkable regularity. Copyright was recently extended to 70 years beyond a creator's death for individuals and to 95 years since inception for corporations. As the argument goes, "fair use"—the provision within copyright law allowing commentary or satire about a protected work—adequately balances free speech requirements and the right of an author to profit from [...]
Steve Kurtz's wife Hope died of a heart attack May 11. Steve, an associate professor of art at University at Buffalo, called 911. The police who came saw some of the materials for an art exhibit on genetic modification and called the FBI. The FBI came in, cordoned off half the block, confiscated Hope's s body, Steve's computer, his notebooks, his art supplies and their cat.
S. 2056, a bill to increase the penalties for transmission of "obscene, indecent, and profane material" by TV and radio broadcasters to $275,000 for each violation (from 27,000) is currently on the Senate Legislative Calendar.
CBS rejected a Super Bowl advertisement from MoveOn.org, saying the ad violated its advocacy rules.
The Super Imposer Removed from Fairfield Center for Creative Arts Fairfield, CA Jim Kimberly's sculpture, "The Super Imposer," was removed from the Juried Art Show at the gallery of the Fairfield Center for Creative Arts in Fairfield, CA because it was considered politically controversial. The interactive sculpture, a two-sided panel with the American Flag on one side and Osama bin [...]
NEWSDAY June 25, 2003 Three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court compared the Internet to "a vast library including millions of readily available and indexed publications ... a vast platform from which to address and hear from a world-wide audience." Unfortunately, the library and the audience have just shrunk. On Monday, the court upheld the Children's Internet Protection Act [...]
A review of: Aaron Caplan's "Public School Discipline for Creating Uncensored Anonymous Internet Forums," Williamette Law Review, Winter 2003, v39, n1. Facilitating the anonymous speech of others has always been a hazardous endeavor. In the 18th century, publisher John Peter Zenger sat in prison for eight months for printing and disseminating some unsigned articles that attacked an unpopular governor [...]
While galleries and museums could choose to avoid controversy and exclude potentially controversial art, the Internet, with its wide accessibility ...
Newsday September 16, 2002 In the post 9/11 world, there is undoubtedly a government official whose job is to invent innocuous-sounding, if not reassuring, acronyms for government initiatives against terrorism. Operation TIPS is a case in point. The Terrorism Information and Prevention System will recruit millions of utility, transportation and other workers to report on "potentially unusual or suspicious [...]
It's fitting that one of the two books we've chosen to inaugurate the Free Expression Policy Project Book Page has itself become a target of censorship pressures.
Always on the alert for "offensive" art work, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has once more found a target: the work of Spanish artist Antoni Miralda exhibited at Copia, Napa Valley's new food, wine and arts museum. The exhibition, "Active Ingredients," which runs through April 22, features specially commissioned food-related works by seven contemporary artists. Miralda, a [...]
THE KNOWLEDGE PROJECT While censorship in the fields of art and politics has traditionally garnered the preponderance of public attention, the last few years has brought increased scrutiny of First Amendment concerns in the area of scientific research. A scientist's right to communicate and disseminate his or her research findings, however, is a form of speech that is no less [...]
A number of critics have taxed Not in Front of the Children with being insufficiently sensitive to the concerns of parents about sexual explicitness and graphic violence in popular culture. It's true that the book doesn't decry all the gross and offensive entertainment that is available—there is already a vast literature on that subject. My purpose instead was to stimulate [...]
The Elsie May Goodwin Art Center, run by the Stockton Art League, rejected a sculpture by one of its members—Vincent Mazo—because the piece was too anatomically explicit. The gallery has no policy excluding nudes, but, according to Aleen Gall, the gallery manager, the nudes normally exhibited are female and show no genitals. Interesting, I thought genitals were a part of [...]
Orchard Artworks, a Bryn Athyn, PA art gallery, removed six works by Linda Griffith from an exhibit that opened September 21, 2001. The work was considered "too political" for the gallery. The exhibit, "Uncertain Future: Earth Found, Used and Abused," focused on environment issues. Griffith's photographs committed the sin of bringing issues of environment abuse too close to home. The [...]
Chairman McCain, Senator Hollings, and Members of the Committee. I am pleased to have the opportunity to testify before you today. I am the CEO and co-owner of Artemis Records a year old independently owned record company. Our current roster includes Rickie Lee Jones, Steve Earle, Warren Zevon, and the Baha Men. During the nineteen-nineties I was the President of [...]
The Nation August 7-14, 2000 by Marjorie Heins Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics. By Jane Alexander. Public Affairs. 335 pp. $25. When Jane Alexander took charge of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993, hopes were high among the cultural elite that the much-loved actress's glamour, status and theatrical skills would disarm the [...]
When the Supreme Court resoundingly rejected the Communications Decency Act in 1997, most people concluded that cyberspace was now a realm of unfettered free speech. There have been some subsequent threats...
UPDATE: MIT was denied the security clearance necessary to complete a full review of the situation to determine if data was in fact manipulated. Theodore Postol, Professor of Science and Technology and National Security at MIT, wrote a letter describing how the Missile Defense Agency had doctored the results of the National Missile Defense Test. Postol was then visited by Pentagon [...]
Is it possible, at all remotely possible, that an Arkansas institution of higher learning would bring a Russian communist to their campus and then rescind a similar invitation to an award-winning novelist? An Arkansas born and bred novelist?
by Joan E. Bertin In Holland, Michigan, a small town near Grand Rapids, there’s a pitched battle over Internet censorship in the library. It’s only one salvo in what promises to be another long, drawn-out culture war. On February 22, voters in Holland will be asked to decide whether the city should withdraw funding from the district library if the [...]
Holland, Michigan On February 22 the community defeated, 55 to 44, a proposal to require filters on all Herrick District Library computers. For an article in The Holland Sentinel, click here. Background (Posted January 2000): On February 22, 2000, Holland, Michigan, will vote on a proposal to force the city to withdraw funding from the Herrick District Library unless the [...]
The American Family Association, which has already targeted Holland and Hudsonville in its campaign to censor the Internet in public libraries, has now turned its sights on Midland’s Grace A. Dow Memorial Library.
In the second week of January, Spotswood High School English teacher Jeff Newton, four high school students and five groups representing libraries, booksellers and authors filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, alleging that their First Amendment rights were violated when the school's principal ordered the removal of a list of banned books posted on Newton's classroom door. Background: Spotswood [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is an alliance of 48 national, non-commercial organizations, including religious, educational, professional, artistic, labor, and civil liberties groups. United by a conviction that freedom of thought, inquiry and expression must be defended, they work to educate their members and the public about the dangers of censorship and how to oppose it. NCAC opposes food [...]
Most Americans - 93 percent according to a recent Freedom Forum poll - say they believe in the First Amendment. A recent incident in Hauppauge illustrates something else the poll revealed: Many Americans really don't understand it.
The National Coalition Against Censorship has joined the Internet Free Expression Alliance to insure that the Internet Online Summit, which is dominated by an effort to restrict children's access to certain kinds of materials on the Internet, does not promote policies and practices that violate the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. NCAC urges participants in the [...]
LOS ANGELES TIMES Friday, October 17, 1997 The first round of papers has been filed in a federal appeals court in San Francisco challenging the constitutionality of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. At the same time, the new movie version of Vladimir Nabokov's book Lolita, starring Jeremy Irons, is opening all over Europe, even though it is not [...]
ProChoice IDEA - Summer/Fall 1997 Sex and the Censors Censorship of anything related to sex is on the rise. Here are some recent examples: The police in Oklahoma City seized copies of the Academy-Award winning film, The Tin Drum, after a local group complained about it and a judge called it "obscene." The Wall Street Journal reported that the new [...]
NEWSDAY Tuesday, August 5, 1997 What can explain the fact that The Tin Drum could win an Academy Award for best foreign film and Best Picture at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, and be faced with the claim that it is "obscene" and "child pornography" in 1997? Were we all blind to obscenity and child pornography then? [...]
The Colorado Court of Appeals ordered the Jefferson County School Board to reinstate the high school teacher they had fired for teaching Bertolucci's film, "1900." Alfred Wilder, an English teacher for 25 years, was dismissed for not obtaining prior approval to show the film about fascism, considered an epic, in his logic and debate class, and for other alleged infractions.
