In today’s current political climate, a taboo-challenging novel may begin this way,
“Labor, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. La-bor the tip of the tongue taking a trip of two steps down the palate to tap, on two, through the lips. La. Bor…”
A couple weeks ago, Terry Jones finally gave into his burning desire to burn a Qur'an. Over the weekend, Afghans rioted over online video of the burning, resulting in the deaths of up to 20 people. General Petreus called the burning a "security threat" to the Afghan occupation, and Senators Harry Reid and Lindsay Graham have called for Congress to [...]
Perhaps you heard that the Arkansas State Legislature has banned students from wearing "clothing that exposes underwear, buttocks, or the breast of a female" at all school-related functions. So: Can they do that? Fire up the Free Speech Wayback Machine to 1969. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court ruled that school authorities could not [...]
On Wednesday we featured an RSAnimate video about mutual knowledge as an essential element of dissent, as demonstrated by Wikileaks. Today we feature an RSAnimate on how authoritarian regimes can leverage dissent on the Internet for their own end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU The speaker, Evgeny Morozov, notes a few phenomena of interest. First, in China, how blogs critical of local governance are [...]
Update: As the Boston Herald reports, Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree has issued a statement insisting that the Maine Department of Labor mural (removed in late March by order of Gov. Paul LePage), should be put back up in the Department so the state won’t have to repay to the federal government most of its $60,000 cost. She adds, "Public art [...]
When it comes down to it, most of the documents in Wikileaks's Cablegate release refer to issues that had already been covered in the press. Did we really need Wikileaks to tells us that Mexico isn’t doing a great job combating corruption and cartels? Or that the war in Afghanistan is going poorly? Or that Pakistan and North Korea and [...]
Though the U.S. military has occupied Afghanistan for nearly a decade, we have rarely received the opportunity to hear about the lives of every day Afghans from the mouths of everyday Afghans. On the eve of one such opportunity, the book tour of Afghani activist and politician Malalai Joya, the State Department decided to deny her a visa. In 2007, Joya’s brave [...]
NCAC participating organization, People For the American Way, has developed a detailed summary of the events around Hide/Seek complete with suggestions as to "what to do next time." PFAW was one of the organizations who signed NCAC's joint letter to the Smithsonian Board of Regents (PDF download). Click here to read the PFAW report online.
NCAC participating organization, People for the American Way, has developed a detailed summary of the events around Hide/Seek complete with suggestions as to "what to do next time." PFAW was one of the organizations who signed NCAC's joint letter to the Smithsonian Board of Regents
Button brought back from the March 2011 Culture Wars symposium with the Corcoran and Transformer DC.
Earlier this week, Maine Governor Paul LePage ordered that a mural in the Department of Labor depicting scenes from Maine’s labor be removed. Why? Because the mural “sends a message that we’re one-sided, and I don’t want to send that message.” Of course – why else would the Department of Labor have a mural of labor history, if not [...]
Censorship is about who has permission to speak about what in public. Women, both as speakers and subject, have often been marginalized or stricken from the public sphere, and so we'd like to provide some choice selections from NCAC's work on censorship as it specifically impacts women.
In a victory for academic freedom, the Tribunal de Grand Instance de Paris has ruled against a libel case brought against Prof. Joseph Weiler for GlobalLawBooks.org's review of The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court. ICTY and ICTR Precedents, by Dr Karin N. Calvo-Goller. The judge ruled that Calvo-Goller engaged in forum shopping by selecting France as the venue [...]
The Texas Civil Rights Project has released a fascinating, detailed report on the nearly 12,000 books banned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from entering the state's prison system. The arbitrary nature of the list, including Shakespeare's sonnets and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Wistlestop Cafe, defies any security-based explanation. Check out the searchable Zoho spreadsheet to see if [...]
The latest billboard controversy, around the removal of a billboard paid for by a Texas anti-abortion group from an advertising space in SoHo, owned by Lamar Advertising, comes as no surprise. In 2006 Lamar refused to run photographs by Polish artist Karolina Bregula that show same-sex couples holding hands. The photographs were to be displayed as part of a Real [...]
(image from JusticeOnline) The audience stood to greet and applaud Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she took the podium at George Washington University. But as the audience sat down again, a retired CIA analyst named Robert McGovern remained on his feet and calmly turned his back on Clinton in silent protest of her votes and policies regarding the wars [...]
Unveiled in 1922, Frederick MacMonnies' Triumph of Civic Virtue was called sexist from the get go. And sexist it unarguably is (to an extent that it borders on a parody of sexism): Virtue is a club-wielding man, while Vice is two women being trampled beneath Virtue’s feet. The statue stirred up so much public debate that the city held a [...]
(image from artinfo.com) It turns out that the enclosure of the World Wide Web into propriety social networks like Facebook has a downside, as the global art community is discovering. Facebook's censors reviewers have repeatedly disabled accounts for posting images of Gustave Courbet's iconic 1866 painting, "The Origin Of The World", a frank and naturalistic portrait of a woman's genitalia. [...]
Were you unable to make it to NCAC's "Policing the Sacred" panel on religion and freedom of expression at this year's CAA? Now is your chance to take in the discourse and debate with these full-length videos! The National Coalition Against Censorship has edited video of “Policing the Sacred: Art, Censorship, and the Politics of Faith,” a session held during [...]
David Hudson of the First Amendment Center is connecting the dots between the hypothetical case presented in the 2011 First Amendment Moot Court Competition (in which the College Of William and Mary Law School emerged victorious -- Go Tribe!) and the questions of freedom and accountability surrounding online speech facing administrators and communities around the country: Many questions remain in [...]
We are thrilled announce Aaron Dunbar's "Hare Tactics" as the 1st Place Winner of our 2010 Youth Film Contest. Sarah Phan and Lyndi Low took 2nd Place with "Malediction", and Evangeline Fachon and Lindsay Tomasetti's "Static" won 3rd Place. Watch the films now and join our winners for a March 26th Awards Screening at the New York Film Academy!
Stanley Bermudez' Heritage? (above) had been displayed for just over two weeks at the Gainesville State College Gallery before Martha Nesbitt, the President of GSC, ordered its removal. The painting, which layers images of a Klansman and a lynching upon a Confederate battle flag, drew protests spurred by a post on Southern Heritage Alerts. The Heritage Preservation Association, which has [...]
Democracy Now! reports the Obama administration is continuing the Bush regime's policy of directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to search and copy computers, smartphones, cameras, and hard drives of "listed" Americans returning to the United States. ACLU (NCAC member!) staff attorney Catherine Crump says "many journalists and lawyers who often work abroad have also experienced similar interrogations." The ACLU [...]
Prof. Joseph Weiler of NYU, and Editor-In-Chief of the European Journal Of Law, has contributed an incisive editorial regarding charges that he defamed an author through an unfavorable book review: ...I was summoned to appear before an Examining Magistrate in Paris based on a complaint of criminal defamation lodged by the author. Why Paris you might ask? Indeed. The author [...]
Joy Garnett of NEWSgrist has posted her reflections on the NCAC's panel at CAA: 'Policing the Sacred' broached the most interesting age-old conundrum of art, religion and censorship. It asked that we ourselves examine the lines between hate speech, critique, parody, and appropriation of the sacred and its symbols by artists as well as by governments. Several factors were noted [...]
Amanda Palmer, co-founder of the legendary Dresden Dolls and known for a wide variety of solo work, is a damn-proud alumna of the Lexington High School drama program. She credits it for granting her the opportunity to work with avant-garde material and forms that continue to influence her as a performer and artist. Naturally, then, she felt particularly outraged by [...]
Anniston Star calls City Council's proposal to bar public employees from criticizing city on social media "oppressive" The Star, Anniston, Alabama's daily newspaper, has published an editorial responding to their City Council's proposed policy to ban city workers from posting anything "embarrassing" about the local government. Public employees would be allowed to comment about the city on Facebook -- but [...]
In response to the national outrage over the removal of artist David Wojnarowicz’ video Fire In My Belly from the National Portrait Gallery following pressure from the Catholic League and Republican Congressional leaders, the Smithsonian Board of Regents formed an Advisory Panel*.
Policing The Sacred, organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship, looks at the volatile relationship between art, politics and religion.In recent decades the tensions between these have become intense, evident in the American culture wars of the 90s, the Danish cartoon uproar, and ongoing battles over artistic depictions of religious figures, including the recent removal of a David Wojnarowicz video from a show at the National Portrait Gallery. The panel, open to the public, takes place on Wednesday, February 9th, from 12:30-2 PM.
We’d like to take a moment to honor artist Dennis Oppenheim, who passed away Friday, January 21. Oppenheim was no stranger to controversy and censorship. His sculpture, Device to Root Out Evil (pictured) took years to find public acceptance.
NCAC occasionally publishes guest blogs on topics related to free speech. The views in these articles do not necessarily reflect the official position of NCAC, however they raise important issues for discussion. By Vel Nirtist How do you keep the unwashed masses known as the "public" from highly prestigious and quite remunerative pursuit known as "public debate" which rightly belongs [...]
ARTINFO reports: After outraging the art world, several of its funders, and a giant chunk of its constituency with its fatal decision to remove David Wojnarowicz’s “Fire in My Belly” from the National Portrait Gallery’s “Hide/Seek” show, the Smithsonian has chosen to respond to its critics in a dramatic, and rather odd, fashion: instead of returning the work to the [...]
Overruling a decision by the schools' superintendent, the Waterbury, Conn Board of Education allowed a high-school production of August Wilson's play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, to go on. Superintendent David L. Snead had opposed the production, saying that the school and educators should not be staging a play that might encourage use of the word "nigger." The play will [...]
Censorship continues full front attacks on all the arts. Two weeks into 2011, we've already seen censorship of David Wojnarowicz at the National Portrait Gallery; a new edition of Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finn hit the bookstores, without the N-word; the arrest of Belarus theater director Nikolai Khalezin of Belarus Free Theatre and now the Waterbury Connecticut school district is attempting [...]
On Thursday, January 13th, a new museum opens in Washington, DC: The Museum of Censored Art, founded by art and free speech activists Mike Blasenstein and Michael Dax Iacovone. Mike and Mike are the iPad protesters, who were expelled from the National Portrait Gallery when they attempted to show David Wojnarowicz's video Fire In My Belly in the galleries of [...]
NewSouth Books, based in Alabama, is publishing a new edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. As many know, Mr. Twain has been very much in the news lately. His Autobiography is a current bestseller (NYTimes bestseller list for 10 weeks now) and is earning well-deserved praise. Regrettably, now we must add another reason [...]
In January of 2011 NewSouth Books in Montgomery, Alabama decided to release a version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn replacing the word “nigger” with “slave” 219 times. The idea to replace the word came from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery, who approached the publisher in July 2010. The decision sparked a debate among educators [...]
The familiar "he said/ she said" binary so beloved of the media has shaped the controversy over LA MOCA's whitewashing of a political mural as an opposition between those who define it as censorship and those who define it as sensitivity. Here is the LA Times: “Censorship,” some cry, referring to Deitch’s removal of Blu’s antiwar mural on the north [...]
This Sunday, Dec 19th, hundreds of artists, curators, queer and free speech activists, as well as other supporters of free speech gathered in front of Metropolitan Museum to take part in a rally demanding that the Smithsonian return the censored video by artist David Wojnarowicz, “A Fire In My Belly,” to the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in [...]
A mural announcing LA MOCA’s upcoming Art in the Streets exhibition, a survey of street art over the past four decades, was painted over - upon orders from the Museum - shortly after it appeared on December 8th. Was this an act of censorship or an exercise of legitimate curatorial control? The answer may depend on your definition of both terms.
