School districts are the most active battlefield in the American culture wars today. Teachers need our support; they need our trust; they need to have the freedom to exercise their professional judgment.
The National Coalition Against Censorship is deeply concerned about efforts to punish an adjunct professor at Columbia University for not censoring a racial slur out of a quotation she used in class.
NCAC is deeply concerned by Zoom, Facebook and YouTube's recent censorship of an academic forum due to the affiliation of one of the speakers with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
NCAC, joined by ten organizations, is protesting a Texas school district’s decision to remove from a school website an editorial cartoon that was part of a class assignment because it criticizes the use of violence against Black people over the course of American history, including violence by police. The assignment was canceled after the National Fraternal Order of Police complained [...]
Pepperdine University is refusing to display an art student's works alongside her peers because the works depict nudity.
This school year we want you to be prepared to defend your right to speak, think and create.
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.
The National Coalition Against Censorship is gravely concerned about President Trump's vague announcement of a proposed executive order tying federal research funding to universities' adherence to a free-speech code.
A student artist at CU Boulder may have been censored by his university. Investigation in progress.
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and ArtsEverywhere have launched an online roundtable to investigate the intersections of art, freedom and the politics of social justice.
After anonymous complaints about brief images of sexual acts in an avant-garde film shown in class, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design launched a sexual harassment investigation. Saul Levine, the professor teaching the class and the target of the investigation, who is also a well-regarded avant-garde filmmaker, resigned in protest. This incident raises serious concerns beyond the individual case.
Brandeis University has had to cancel a scheduled production of a play by Michael Weller after the playwright and the Theater Department failed to come to terms as to how the play would be presented.
The parents claim that the school taught solely Islamic religious practices in a World Culture and Geography curriculum, ignoring education in other world religions.
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.
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 group of parents claim the New Trier High School's Seminar Day does not include a fair balance of perspective.
According to the bill, “no teacher may be prohibited from helping students understand, analyze, critique, or review in an objective scientific manner the strengths and weaknesses of scientific information.”
The letter questions the bills breadth, which may end up flagging valuable works of literature that include sexual scenes.
A professor who spoke at a Black Lives Matter protest on her campus was promptly suspended. Now students are demanding that she be reinstated.
A prominent Northwestern University professor resigns in the wake of a censorship scandal involving a faculty magazine.
NCAC and FIRE weigh in on the controversy over the firing of LSU professor Teresa Buchanan, who reportedly told a number of jokes that some students found uncomfortable.
A California college rejected a student's request to remove four books from an English course. That's good. But the school is considering adding a 'disclaimer' to the course.
Updates are coming in on the threat to academic freedom at the University of Colorado Boulder. According to the Daily Camera (via the Chronicle of Higher Ed's Ticker blog), CU professor Patricia Adler might still have a chance to teach her "Deviance in U.S. Society" course as early as the Spring 2014 semester–if the class clears a review of Sociology faculty, [...]
Why is it that every time sex enters the conversation in academia, harassment always appears to shadow it? How perverse - and unfair to real victims of harassment - that this serious charge is used against a professor for nothing else than creatively doing her job. In a lecture on prostitution, a highlight of her regular course on deviance, University [...]
It's not just athletes and celebrities that damage their careers with indiscreet tweets.
For those of you who haven't yet heard, the Associated Press recently revealed that Mitch Daniels, now President of Purdue University, attempted to ban the works of acclaimed historian Howard Zinn from classrooms in Indiana during his tenure as that state's governor. In 2010, after Howard Zinn's passing, Daniels (seen here in an artist's rendering) wrote an e-mail to the [...]
Until a few weeks ago, the Arts Building at the Aurari Higher Education Center in Denver featured several walls emblazoned with the kindly decree to “Post Artwork Here.” However, in light of recent controversy over the graphic work that student Estee Fox hung on one of these walls, the “authorities” (that blissfully meaningless blanket term) have rechristened these areas as [...]
This week, Villanova University's administration cancelled a weeklong, artist-in-residency program led by performance artist Tim Miller. NCAC and FIRE are calling on Villanova to reverse this decision. The joint letter (below) points out that the decision to cancel Miller's residency violates the principle of academic freedom. Miller is known as one of the "NEA Four" – four artists whose grants [...]
Two years ago I sat upon the graduation stage to receive a diploma that would end my 13-year relationship with the public school I attended since kindergarten. As a member of a class of 125 students, this day symbolized endless shared memories and a common identity between us. Out of the five speeches given, the three student speakers [...]
A Seattle billboard removed by Clear Channel Outdoor It is appalling that the trustees of CUNY voted not to bestow an honorary degree on Tony Kushner, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, because a trustee disagreed with his views on Israel. Denying him this honor solely because of his political views violates core First Amendment principles and is [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
A photograph of a male nude by Savannah College of Art & Design student Nicole Craine was among the several artworks taken down before an Open Studio Exhibition at the school in October. Reportedly, the students were given no explanation as to why their work was taken down. College administrators later admitted that the content would be “unacceptable” for a [...]
NCAC recently fielded a plea for help from a Boston University student filmmaker, at the College of Communication, whose film Wake Up had been removed from regular class consideration and critique for reasons which depended very much on point of view. The student thought it was art. The faculty called it pornography. What was not in dispute was that the [...]
The cancellation of Terrence McNally’s play Corpus Christi by Tarleton State University, under pressure from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and others, is an affront to academic freedom and First Amendment principles of free speech. The play was denounced by Tarleton’s president, Dominic Dottavio, who called it “crude and irreverent.” Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst opined that [...]
NCAC joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in filing a friend of the court brief calling for the reinstatement of Ward Churchill, who was fired from his tenured position at the University of Colorado after writing a controversial essay. The case became highly politically charged after public officials began to call for [...]
A Jefferson County Public School student was banned from mentioning the name of his website in a Search Engine Optimization class offered through the school's online continuing education program. His URL: www.olbastard.com. His context: he sells bastard files. He attempted to post comments to the online forum, but because his URL was the subject of his questions, his posts were [...]
Athey Creek Middle School in West Linn, Oregon has taught its eighth grade students a First Amendment curriculum for ten years, addressing the controversies surrounding commonly-banned books and reading the books in class. The unit drew no major criticism until early last month, when librarian and teacher Michael Diltz faced ire from several parents. He had written two common “obscenities” [...]
