Top 40 Threats to Free Speech Right Now!
To celebrate NCAC's 40th Anniversary, we take a look at 40 threats to free speech.
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Using Graphic Novels in Education: Stuck in the Middle: Seventeen Comics from an UNPLEASANT Age
Welcome to Using Graphic Novels in Education, an ongoing feature from CBLDF that is designed to allay confusion around the content of graphic novels and to help parents and teachers raise readers. In this column, we examine graphic novels, including th...
South Park‘s Matt Stone Opens Up About Censorship
In advance of the release of the wildly-anticipated video game South Park: The Stick of Truth, CBLDF reported that some versions of the game were being censored in countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and in Australia. Now that the game is...
Joint Statement about the University of Colorado’s Actions Relating to Professor Patricia Adler
Statement about the University of Colorado’s Actions Relating to Professor Patricia Adler From The National Coalition Against Censorship, American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and Student Press Law Center January 2, 2014 As groups concerned about academic freedom and free speech, we join the American Association of University Professors in expressing alarm over the [...]
Books
Books have been censored, challenged or banned for centuries. Here's a quick guide to understanding when and why.
NCAC Talks to the Man Behind Pico v. Board of Ed
Steven Pico in 1981 Steven Pico may not be a household name. But for those who champion the freedom to read, he’s a big deal. Back in 1976, Pico and four other teens sued their school district in Long Island, NY, for banning 11 books from their classrooms and school libraries. The six-year battle to defend the constitutional rights [...]
Robie Harris Honored With New Literacy Award
Children's book author, Free Speech Defender, and NCAC Board member Robie Harris is the very first recipient of the Mills Tannenbaum Award for Children's Literacy, presented by Reach Out and Read of Greater New York!
LGBTQ Book Bans and Challenges
List of LGBTQ Book Bans and Challenges
Sex And Censorship: Dangers to Minors and Others?
A Background Paper1 Introduction We are working up a fever making new laws against touching, and we're more scandalized by a photograph or painting showing a nipple or a penis than by the image of a starving child on a dry, dusty road. Thomas Moore, Mother Jones, September/October 1997 It's Sodom and Gomorrah all over again Dr. Robert L. Simonds, [...]
National organizations, artists and academics protest removal of artwork from John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Censorship of Betsy Schneider's "Quotidian" in response to complaints jeopardizes the institution's integrity and commitment to artistic freedom.
Trading Academic Freedom for Foreign Markets
The current controversy over Yale University’s planned campus in Singapore is, at bottom, an argument over how much compromise on free speech is justified in exchange for the presumed benefits of locating branches of U.S. universities within authoritarian regimes. For although the champions of global ventures like Yale’s often claim that academic freedom will be available at the foreign outposts, [...]
The FCC and Indecency: The Supreme Court Decides Not to Decide
The potentially momentous case of Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television ended on June 21 not with a bang but a whimper. True, a unanimous Supreme Court vacated the FCC's rulings that the "fleeting expletives" in two TV programs and the fleeting nudity in a third were "indecent." But it did so on the narrow ground that the agency violated [...]
Mexican American Studies Ban in Tucson Unified School District: Response and Resources
NCAC stands with dozens of national organizations that have joined together to protest the banning of books used for the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). This is censorship at its most brazen. Officials at the state and local level are responsible for this unacceptable restriction on the educational opportunities of students and their ability [...]
Climate change skepticism seeps into science classrooms
Climate change skepticism seeps into science classroomsBy Neela Banerjee | McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceWASHINGTON — A flash point has emerged in American science education that echoes the battle over evolution, as scientists and educators report mo...
Censorship, Arizona Style
Read the joint statement of over two dozen organizations speaking out against the removal of books used in the Mexican-American Studies Progam in the Tucscon Unified School District
It’s About Time We Have “The Video Game Talk”
Last Monday the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to strike down a California law that banned the selling of violent video games to minors. The Supreme Court ruled that video games are allowed the same protection under the first amendment as books, plays, and movies. The ruling also distinguished the California statute from the Ginsburg vs. New York decision, in which [...]
Fact Sheet on Media Violence
This Fact Sheet answers some frequently-asked questions about social science research into the effects of media violence. The bottom line is that despite the claims of some psychologists and politicians, the actual research results have been weak and ambiguous. This should not be surprising: media violence is so pervasive in our lives, and comes in so many different contexts and [...]
Power, Taboo and the Artist video series
Check out the video project: "Power, Taboo and the Artist," a series of video interviews with artists and curators worldwide. Missed the panels? You can watch and share these video webcasts and take a look at our photos.
How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20
When it was founded in the 1960s, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a central part of its mission was to support individuals and institutions producing edgy and innovative artwork. Twenty years ago, as a result of pressures on behalf of Republicans in Congress and the religious right, Congress amended the statute governing the NEA to require that it [...]
NCAC Presents a Series of Programs on the Effects of the Culture Wars
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Congressional decision to require the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to consider "general standards of decency and respect" in awarding grants, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) presents How Obscene is This?, a program about censorship and arts funding.