NCAC speaks with Miranda Taylor, a student at Richmond Early College in North Carolina, whose school canceled this year's yearbook, in part, because of her senior quote: "Build That Wall."
NCAC is in the process of writing to the elementary school underlining that students have a First Amendment right to receive and possess literature, provided the books in question do not cause disruption to school activities.
The objecting New London parents say that the book features “gratuitous and unnecessary” profanity and sexual references.
NCAC's letter will underline that a primary goal of the school system "is to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship by promoting democratic values such as free expression, tolerance, and diversity." This includes diversity of opinion.
The petition focuses on the legal rights of whistle blowers, demanding adequate protections to ensure they receive a fair trial in any subsequent court action taken against them.
Even when not enforced or non-binding, anti-BDS bills potentially chill protected expression by singling out the expression of unpopular or controversial views. Such bills seriously and impermissibly undermine core First Amendment rights.
The message government is communicating appears to be that young people's opinions concerning such issues are not respected and don't matter.
The online petition has been launched in response to the news DHS Secretary Kelly is likely to implement the proposal.
NCAC is delighted to announce our three winners for our 2016 Youth Free Expression Film Contest.
Our colleagues at the American Library Association (ALA) this week released their annual list of the ten most challenged books for the year of 2016. What's NCAC's relationship with the book's on the list.
The bill is vague, allowing challenges and changes to curricular selections made by ideological actors.
The letter argues that choosing to remove a book citing "community standards" sets a dangerous precedent for future book challenges.
A profile of muralist Mike Alewitz describes how his radical politics infuses his work and left him open to many incidents of censorship.
The play offers a perspective on the experience of growing up biracial -- or "mulatto," a dated term used to describe a person with one black and one white parent.
The Arizona school district removed Khaled Hosseini's novel after 5 years on the English curriculum, raising questions about the motivations behind the decision.
Joan Bertin, the longtime executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), announced today that she is stepping down from her role in June.
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and 6 other organizations committed to defending the right to read are urging a North Carolina school district to reinstate a children’s book in a 1st grade anti-bullying lesson plan after it was removed following pressure from local Republican lawmakers concerned about its gender-nonconforming themes.
The parents claim that the school taught solely Islamic religious practices in a World Culture and Geography curriculum, ignoring education in other world religions.
In the aftermath of the Whitney Biennial controversy, NCAC has aggregated the best commentary and opinions on the fraught but necessary incident.
NCAC has joined the Student Press Law Center, the Cato Institute and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in urging the Supreme Court to take the case of Craig Keefe who was expelled from a nursing program for 'unprofessional' remarks.
The decision to cancel the play was understandable, given the controversy around the photo, but was it the best decision that could have been made?
The book, Jacob’s New Dress, was pulled after Republican lawmakers complained. For several month a group called Values Coalition has charged the district of using "indoctrinating" materials.
NCAC is pleased to announce our twelve finalists for our 2016 Youth Free Expression Film Contest: Watch What You #Tweet: How Free Should Social Media Be? Our panel of judges will carefully evaluate these films and announce the first, second, and third-place winners in mid-April.
Throughout March, to celebrate Women's History Month, NCAC will be spotlighting censorship cases involving women and women's issues on its crowdsourced wiki, Censorpedia.
S.B. 393 is the latest in a string of similar “anti-science bills” introduced in states around the country. One such bill was rejected by South Dakota’s House Education Committee last month.
Yesterday, NCAC, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and 6 other free speech and education groups defended Ariel Schrag's acclaimed anthology Stuck in the Middle, which had been challenged in a school library in Oklahoma. NCAC joined CBLDF to ask Schrag for her thoughts on the challenge.
NCAC highlights that Stuck in the Middle is praised for its realistic, un-sanitized depiction of difficult situations that characterize the harder truths of teenage life.
The violent protesters of Charles Murray need to understand a basic principle: the right to speech exists for all, or for none.
NCAC’s letter to the school district reprimands the school for violating its own book challenge review process, and emphasizes the value of Rowell’s novel.
Efforts to undermine the legitimacy or independence of the press, the statement reads, “betray the country’s most cherished values and undercut one of its most significant strengths.”
NCAC is urging a Maryland school district to allow its teachers to display a series of posters promoting diversity and inclusion in America after administrators ordered their removal over concerns of political bias.
The posters were deemed to break the school's policy that forbids classroom materials that attempt to sway the political opinions of students.
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian were flagged for "explicit, graphic" content.
A formal complaint was lodged by a local parent who was offended by the presence of profanity in the book, which includes passages that reference sexual assault.
The Yamhill-Carlton School District in Western Oregon pulled the New York Times bestseller from a school lesson plan without following the school's review process for book challenges.
The bill removes the restraints on teachers that prevent them from straying from professionally-developed science standards adopted by state educators.
Santa Rosa Press Gazette, 2/13/2017
A group of parents claim the New Trier High School's Seminar Day does not include a fair balance of perspective.
An exhibition of artworks celebrating Black History Month was removed from display in a San Jose School district building after complaints calling the works offensive.
The number of cases registered in 2016 more than doubled the amount registered in 2015, an increase of 119%, which translates to an extra 469 attacks.
