The National Coalition Against Censorship and the other national groups signed below call upon the Missouri legislature to reject Missouri House Bill 2044, a recently introduced library censorship bill. The bill poses urgent dangers to the constitutional rights of Missouri’s citizens, including librarians, parents, and children. It is also redundant in light of existing Missouri law that already makes it [...]
Free speech and government transparency organizations call for the United States Senate to allow full press access to the current impeachment proceedings.
NCAC opposes proposed legislation threatening Missouri libraries' independence and citizens' freedom to read.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts renews its major support of NCAC's Arts Advocacy Program
NCAC is calling on Loudoun County Public Schools to avoid viewpoint discrimination and uphold kids' right to access LGBTQ books.
Arizona considers banning sex ed before seventh grade.
These are the free speech stories our readers cared about most this year.
In November 2019, for Creative Time Summit X: Speaking Truth, our Arts Advocacy Program (AAP) organized the roundtable session Fear and Controversy: Censorship in the Arts at the Cooper Union with artists Christina Freeman (UltraViolet Archive), Roopa Vasudevan (Center for Media at Risk, University of Pennsylvania) and Joy Garnett (NCAC's Arts Advocacy Program). The number of attendees (approx. 25 [...]
Lawmakers challenging introduction of comprehensive sex ed are calling for ban on popular sexual health guide in schools and libraries.
Photographs and the First Amendment. Stegmaier's Harrowing Journey Through U.S. Customs in His Own Words.
No Starch Press data science book bundle benefits NCAC because data collection and analysis is used throughout the world to suppress people's rights.
Pepperdine University is refusing to display an art student's works alongside her peers because the works depict nudity.
Washington College, Maryland, has censored a student-directed production of The Foreigner due to the appearance of the Ku Klux Klan as the play's villains.
NCAC urges Upshur County library officials to uphold their own policies and the First Amendment by returning Prince & Knight to the children's section of their library.
Commissioners in Citrus County, Florida, recently voted against allocating funds for a digital subscription to the New York Times for county libraries based on political disagreement with the paper.
NCAC awarded Free Speech Defender Awards to young adult author Jason Reynolds and groundbreaking artist Carolee Schneemann at its 45th anniversary celebration.
When agencies use social media to keep tabs on people they perceive as suspicious, it has a disparate impact on historically overpoliced communities, especially communities of color.
Author Aida Salazar shares her own experience with school visits for her new book, The Moon Within, and the struggles she faces with teachers.
In August, the National Park Service issued a proposed rule to introduce fees for holding protests on the National Mall, posing a serious threat to Americans' right to free speech and assembly.
Columbia County Superintendent removed three novels from the proposed high school curriculum despite teachers' recommendations.
UPDATE: 10/24/19: On October 22, the DC Council voted unanimously to override Mayor Muriel Bowser's veto of an emergency bill that would have clarified the DCCAH’s independence. “The underlying legislation cemented DCCAH's separation from the executive's office after a tumultuous summer during which the mayor tried and failed to grab control of the District's public arts.” (see original post below) [...]
Svetlana Mintcheva, NCAC's Director of Programs, presented a talk at the Harvard Law School Library on the effects contemporary moral outrage has on the arts and culture.
NCAC urges Facebook to resist government pressure to end its use of end-to-end security encryption.
Government intervention into the content of higher education courses is very likely to suppress certain views, chill dissent, and restrict academic discourse.
An artist in Hermosa Beach, California, has been pressured by Hermosa Beach Mural Project organizers to remove poet Allen Ginsberg from a new public mural.
Stories that feature characters with diverse ethnicities and sexualities remain at the top of challenged books lists in our schools and libraries. Each removal tells a kid that theirs isn't a story worth telling.
Celebrate Banned Books Week 2019 by reading some of our favorite banned and challenged books.
Christy Chan turned censorship into a powerful artistic statement in Richmond, California
This list of our best resources on censorship and the First Amendment in schools will help you get ready for the school year.
This school year we want you to be prepared to defend your right to speak, think and create.
UPDATE October 4, 2019: The George Washington High School Alumni Association filed a lawsuit in the public interest against the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education, challenging the School Board’s commitment to remove from public view Victor Arnautoff’s 1936 New Deal mural with panels without conducting an environmental review, which is required by California law. UPDATE August 13, [...]
Free Speech Is For Me aims to reverse the trend of free speech being pitted against advocacy for social change and equip a broad new range of individuals to challenge censorship, defend speech rights and champion freedom of expression for all activists.
Join KRRP in demanding Leander City Council immediately reschedule the planned Lumberjanes event and adopt inclusive library policies that guarantee this sort of discrimination does not happen again.
The FBI and other government officials have advised some U.S. universities to develop protocols for monitoring students and scholars from Chinese state-affiliated research institutions, based solely on their country of origin.
Laurie Sheck, a professor at the New School, is under investigation after using the N-word in a class while quoting James Baldwin.
Joan Bertin (former executive director, NCAC), Toni Morrison, Fran Lebowitz “The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, canceled films—that thought is a nightmare. As [...]
NCAC proposes holding an open forum where GWHS students can talk about how they see and interpret the Arnautoff murals. We invite the San Francisco Board of Education to collaborate with us in presenting the forum.
City officials in Leander, Texas abruptly cancelled an appearance by renowned graphic novelist Lilah Sturges at the Leander Public Library just hours before her scheduled visit.
The New Jersey legislature is considering an education bill that would redefine anti-Semitism so broadly as to infringe on protected speech.
A coalition of over two dozen organizations is calling for Congressional leaders to remove a provision in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 that would dramatically expand the definition of a "covert agent."
