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In 1964, the National Endowment for the Arts was conceived as part of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." NCAC's timeline of NEA controversies explains why politicians have since sought to abolish the agency.
Blanche DuBois, the fragile, self-deluding southern belle in Tennessee Williams’s 1947 play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” is one of the great tragic characters in American literature. But who owns Blanche, and can the holder of the copyright in “Streetcar” stop a creative artist from impersonating her, as the author and performer Mark Sam Rosenthal does in his recent performance piece, [...]
In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and of U.S. government efforts to combat terrorism by often secretive or constitutionally dubious means, questions have arisen about the scope of First Amendment protection for political protest and dissent. This Fact Sheet, originally prepared for a November 2006 conference on "Civil Liberties in a Paranoid Society," outlines the [...]
A Brief Look at How Over $1.5 Billion in Federal Funds Have Been Spent on 26 Years of Censorship in Schools
An op-ed written by Mary Ann Ellis, the English Department Head at Appling High School, in response to the Appling County School Board's decision to remove three classic texts from the classroom.
We are troubled by media reports of efforts to remove a number of books from two public school libraries in Duval County. We understand that parents have objected to Vegan Virgin Valentine by Carolyn Mackler at Mandarin High School and to Lucky by Eddie de Oliveira, Beyond the Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume, and Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes at LaVilla School of the Arts.
We asked our Participating Organizations to contribute to Censorship News #100 by reporting on a topic of concern to their constituents. Below are a few responses that illustrate the wide range of censorship-oriented issues that the coalition is working to address.
In 1981, Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Act, also known as the "chastity law," which funded educational programs to "promote self-discipline and other prudent approaches" to adolescent sex. Grant applications to create such programs poured in, and the dollars poured out — to churches and religious conservatives nationwide. A dozen years later, the U.S. Supreme Court held that funded [...]
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law Free Expression Policy Project December 2005 Are increasingly heavy assertions of control by copyright and trademark owners smothering fair use and free expression? The product of more than a year of research, Will Fair Use Survive? paints a striking picture of an intellectual property system that is perilously out of balance. Read [...]
In 1807, an Englishman named Thomas Bowdler published the first, sanitized edition of The Family Shakespeare. He promised that he had removed from Shakespeare's works "everything that can raise a blush on the cheek of modesty."
by Ward Churchill When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm ...
Students enrolled in federally-funded abstinence-only sex education programs are misinformed about science, deprived of vital health information, and exposed to gender stereotypes and religious dogma, according to a Congressional study commissioned by California Representative Henry A. Waxman.
JOHN ASHCROFT, Petitioner v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, et al., Respondents No. 00-1293 In the Supreme Court of the United States On Petition for Certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit BRIEF AMICI CURIAE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF SEXUALITY, THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY OF HUMAN SEXUALITY, THE SEXUAL HEALTH NETWORK, THE [...]
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August 16, 2004 Mayor John W. Hickenlooper 1437 Bannock Street, Ste. 350 Denver, Colorado 80202 Dear Mayor Hickenlooper, The National Coalition Against Censorship, an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations that collaborate to defend First Amendment rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, have been alerted to the recent removal of several works of art from an installation [...]
Resources Permission to Speak: Who Owns Identity & History? Identity & Political Correctness Alterman, Eric. What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News. 2003. Berman, Paul (ed.). Debating P.C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses, 1995. Bruce, Tammy, Laura C. Schlessinger (Foreword). The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds. [...]
NCAC Censorship News Issue #81:
by Marjorie Heins
In January, the Supreme Court declined to review a sweeping decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that essentially denied state-employed professors any First Amendment right to academic freedom. The case of Urofsky v. Gilmore was a challenge to a Virginia law that barred state employees (with the exception of state police) from using state-owned or state-leased computers to access any "sexually explicit" Internet content without prior written approval from their "agency head."
NCAC Censorship News Issue #68: Winter 1997 The most significant First Amendment decision in recent history was the Supreme Court ruling in Reno v. ACLU---which held that communications over the Internet deserve the highest level of constitutional protection. In overturning the Communications Decency Act, the Court ruled that attempts to regulate the Internet to prevent children's access to "indecent" or [...]
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA et al., Appellants v. PLAYBOY ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC. BRIEF AMICI CURIAE OF SEXUALITY SCHOLARS, RESEARCHERS, EDUCATORS, AND THERAPISTS IN SUPPORT OF APPELLEE No. 98-1682 In the Supreme Court of the United States October Term, 1998 On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware Marjorie Heins Counsel of Record 170 West [...]
Svetlana Mintcheva: Welcome to the panel on self-censorship, the second in a series of two panels organized to celebrate the re-launching of the File Room (www.thefileroom.org), an Internet archive of art censorship cases, created by Antoni Muntadas in 1994.
