Update 8/7/2023: The City of San Mateo has responded that it will reinstate its public exhibition programs after it establishes a more detailed review policy for the artworks that are invited for display. The City also confirms Mr. Rios' exhibition was met with "concerns from members of the public and City staff that the display was not supportive of [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship has written a letter to the school board of New Hanover County, North Carolina, urging them to reject a challenge to the book, Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You, authored by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. The board is set to review the complaint after it was already rejected twice by reconsideration committees. A parent [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship recently wrote a letter to the School Board of Hernando County School District in Brooksville, Florida, regarding their choice to remove Louis Sachar's "Marvin Redpost: Is He a Girl?" from elementary school libraries. This decision was made despite a review committee's recommendation to keep the book. The board's action appears to be based on [...]
NEW YORK – The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), an alliance of 59 national non-profit organizations, today announced that Lee Rowland, the policy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, will become its new executive director. She replaces Christopher Finan, who is retiring. Rowland will assume her new duties on September 13, 2023. “The NCAC board of directors [...]
NEW YORK – The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) continues to build expertise in the fields of law, publishing, and the arts by adding to its board of directors Ambika Kumar, Co-Chair of Media Law Practice at Davis Wright Tremaine, Tony Lyons, President and Publisher of Skyhorse Publishing, and Sheryl Oring, artist and Dean of the School of Art, [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has contacted the school board in Mansfield, Texas, regarding a proposed library materials policy. NCAC shared our concern that the policy provision banning the discussion of "gender fluidity" violates the principles set forth by the Supreme Court in Board of Education v. Pico. Furthermore, NCAC is also concerned with the policy's blanket ban on [...]
NEW YORK— Don’t Delete Art (DDA)—a collaborative initiative uniting advocacy groups and artists in the defense of artistic freedom online—held A Day of Action today in New York City and online. The actions are an extension of the group’s Manifesto campaign, which urges social media companies to integrate artistic perspectives into content moderation policies. The day's activities are documented [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship wrote to the Roxbury Public Schools Board of Education in Succasunna, New Jersey, to commend its rejection of a motion to remove nine challenged books before they could be reviewed by a reconsideration committee. Additionally, NCAC recommended two changes to board policy that would increase public transparency in future book challenges. Read NCAC's full [...]
Update 6/6/2023 – The School Board of Newtown has unanimously voted to retain the books, and will “implement a process to support choices of individual parents and guardians to make individual choices for their children.” 6/1/2023 – The National Coalition Against Censorship has contacted the Newtown Public School District in Connecticut. NCAC highlighted concerns that arose from challenges to [...]
NCAC has obtained permission to share the following op-ed from artnet news, which was originally published on May 25, 2023. ARTNET NEWS OP-ED Why the Supreme Court’s Decision in the Andy Warhol Copyright Case Shows the Dangers of a Sympathy Vote The former director of the ACLU’s Arts Censorship Project on the implications of 'Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith.' By [...]
UPDATE 8/31/23: A lawsuit has been filed against the State of New Hampshire over the removal of the Elizabeth Gurley Flynn historical marker. The lawsuit alleges that state officials violated the state’s Administrative Procedures Act, its historic markers program, and the plaintiffs’ rights to due process by interfering with their rights to petition for the approval and erection of [...]
Updated 6/21/2023 – The Hanover County School Board has adopted some of the changes recommended by NCAC including that books will not always be removed pending adjudication if a complainant alleges that they are "pervasively vulgar." However, the policy remains problematic as the district has removed nineteen books from school libraries. 5/18/2023 –The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) recently [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship has written to the school board of Sarasota County Schools in Florida to protest a district administrator's removal of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke from high school libraries. This violates a board policy that bars administrators from removing books until the committee has reviewed them.Read NCAC's full letter to Sarasota County Schools here:Click here for a full-screen view: [...]
NEW YORK - The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) continues to build influence in the fields of entertainment, law, and publishing by adding to its board Amy Berkower, president of Writers House LLC, Jonathan Bloom, former Counsel at the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, and stand-up comedian Judy Gold. The addition of new leadership comes at a [...]
According to news reports, Galesburg-Augusta Community Schools, in Galesburg, Michigan, has removed Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer from school libraries during the adjudication of the book challenge. The National Coalition Against Censorship objects to the violation of district policy, which states that material, "may not be withdrawn from use pending the committee's recommendation to the Superintendent." Read NCAC's full letter [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written a letter to the Superintendent of Middleborough Public Schools in Middleborough, Massachusetts, in response to a report that school officials in your district forbid a student from wearing a shirt that said: "there are only two genders." As the Supreme Court ruled in its landmark decision in Tinker v. Des Moines [...]
May 4, 2023: The EARN IT Act passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously. Senate leadership must now decide whether to move the bill to the Senate floor. Several Senators, including Alex Padilla (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Jon Ossoff (GA), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Peter Welch (D-VT), expressed concerns about the bill during the markup. Senator Padilla entered [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) delivered a joint letter to the City of Bristol, Tennessee, encouraging officials to modify its Social Media Comments Policy to comply with its legal obligations under the First Amendment. Read our full joint letter to the City of Bristol here: Click here for a full-screen [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to the Board of Education in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, to protest the board's decision to remove several books from the schools' libraries while a review is being adjudicated. Removals violate board policy which permits the books to stay on shelves during the review process. Read NCAC's full letter to the Plattsmouth Community [...]
Claudia Johnson is a nationally recognized advocate for free speech and social justice, winner of the inaugural PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award, for her “extraordinary efforts to restore banned literary classics to Florida classrooms”—and author of Stifled Laughter: One Woman's Story About Fighting Censorship, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1994. Fulcrum Publishing has just released a new edition [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship has contacted the school board of Indian River County School District in Vero Beach, Florida, protesting the removal of Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation from a high school library. As we understand it, the principal removed the graphic novel because it depicts Anne Frank walking in a garden that contains classical Greek and Roman [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship has written to the Superintendent of New London-Spicer School District in New London, Minnesota, because we understand that a middle school student has been forbidden from wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt because it refers to a vulgar expression of opposition to President Biden. Although the Supreme Court has stated that schools can prohibit [...]
New York – The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is now accepting applications for Student Advocates for Speech (SAS), a project for high school students, for the 2023 - 2024 school year. NCAC assists SAS student leaders in creating school clubs where they can learn about the importance of free speech and advocate for their rights and the rights of [...]
NEW YORK — The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), PEN America, and the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, organizations dedicated to artistic, intellectual, and academic freedom, today expressed deep concern over the cancellation of the student production of the play, Indecent, by the administration at Douglas Anderson School of Performing Arts in Duval County, Florida. The groups urged school officials [...]
NEW YORK – Today, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), which represents 59 education, publishing, religious and arts organizations and Don’t Delete Art (DDA), a project of NCAC and several other organizations and artists, joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation and over 50 other organizations and institutions in supporting Protect the Stack, a statement calling on internet infrastructure providers not [...]
Companies providing core internet infrastructures—including internet service providers, website host companies, payment processors, and more—rarely have substantial contact with their users, user-generated content, or user activities. And, even though they typically lack expertise, authority, resources, and policies to regulate user content with consistency, many online infrastructure companies do just that. The result has severely restricted free speech on the internet, [...]
In the Fall of 2022, the much-anticipated reopening of the Orange County Museum of Art was marred by the censorship of a painting by renowned artist Ben Sakoguchi in the museum’s California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold. A few months prior to the opening, the artist was informed of concerns coming from the museum’s education department that some of the [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) regarding their decision in March to cancel the exhibition Wall + Response over objections to an idea expressed in one of the pieces. It is our understanding that when Wall + Response was approved by library officials, the poems and murals comprising the project [...]
Photo Credit: Jerald Braddock The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has written to the Town Supervisor of the Town of Greenburgh, New York, regarding its recent call to remove the depiction of Minister Louis Farrakhan, and potentially other controversial figures, from a new town-commissioned mural overseen by the artist known as Kindo Art. The mural was initially commissioned to [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship has delivered a letter to the Auburn Enlarged City School District Board in Auburn, New York, in response to proposed amendments to its Instructional Materials and Controversial Issues policy that will allow parents to limit access to school library materials. Policy amendments are in response to complaints made early this year about All Boys Aren't [...]
In times of war, free speech suffers. Right and wrong appear indisputable. There is moral certainty that “God is on our side.” When we are convinced that the enemy is producing only dangerous lies and propaganda, we want to bar their entry into the marketplace of ideas. The war between Russia and Ukraine is the latest test of our commitment [...]
For this year’s YFEP Film Contest, we invited teens to create a film on the importance of expressing one’s gender and identity through personal appearance. The 3 winners tackled a wide range of polarizing, and often taboo, topics including gun violence, immigrant family separation, gender equality, toxic masculinity, shaming and bullying, and climate change. The Chairs of the New [...]
The National Coalition Against Censorship is concerned that the City of Encinitas’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts has removed several works from an exhibition because of apparent discomfort with some of the content of those works. The censored artist, Elena Karavodin, was selected by the city to produce a number of works for an exhibition in one of [...]
A timeline of free expression issues that arose following the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests for racial justice.
As part of NCAC’s virtual Celebration of Free Speech and Its Defenders Benefit, we are happy to announce the Let Me Speak Design Contest Series, a collection of three unique art contests: Becky Albertalli Fan Art Portugal The Man Boycott the Book Ban Logo NCAC Youth Free Expression Film Contest Logo Each contest is an opportunity for artists and designers [...]
Editors Note: This statement was first published by NCAC and Defending Rights and Dissent on July 17, 2020. It was re-published on July 30, 2020 to reflect new developments and 45 additional co-signatories. Unidentified federal law enforcement agents in Portland, Oregon, have detained protesters, whisking them away in unmarked cars. This shocking practice is evocative of repressive methods used by [...]
NCAC is asking the University of Kentucky (UK) to cancel recently announced plans to remove a 1930’s-era mural depicting aspects of Kentucky history, including slavery. Some students have demanded its removal because they consider it demeaning to people of color on campus. In 2018, the university commissioned an installation by Karyn Olivier, a noted Black artist, that was painted above [...]
NCAC has joined several free speech organizations in supporting Oberlin College’s appeal of a $44 million libel judgment that threatens the free speech rights of its faculty and students. They filed an amicus brief in an Ohio appeals court on June 5. The case grew out of the arrest of three African American students in 2016 for attempted theft [...]
WINDSOR, VT -- The Mt. Ascutney School District Board has removed Windsor School Principal Tiffany Riley from her position after she stated on her personal Facebook account that she disapproved of some of the tactics used by some Black Lives Matter activists. In response, NCAC has written to the school board urging them to rescind their decision to remove Ms. [...]
On June 15, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and PEN America joined in protesting Zoom’s decision to close the account of Humanitarian China, a U.S.-based nonprofit that promotes the development of human rights in China. Zoom acted at the request of Chinese officials who wanted to suppress a virtual meeting commemorating the [...]
