Joel Klein
Chancellor, New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Chancellor Klein:
As you may recall, we wrote you last January about a censorship incident at Brooklyn Tech High School involving the Russell Banks novel, Continental Drift. More recently, we sent you a copy of our letter to Dr. Lee McCaskill, Principal of Brooklyn Tech, about our on-going concerns about censorship at the school, which are shared by many others in the First Amendment and education community. Copies of both letters are enclosed for your convenience. To date, we have not received a reply to either letter.
We are interested primarily in seeing a resolution to this situation that respects First Amendment and academic freedom interests of students and teachers, and high quality education at Brooklyn Tech. To that end, we join our colleagues, Deborah Karpatkin and Arthur Eisenberg from the New York Civil Liberties Union, in requesting a meeting to discuss how this might be accomplished.
Sincerely,
Joan Bertin
Executive Director
National Coalition Against Censorship
Chris Finan
President
American Booksellers Association for Free Expression
Larry Siems
Director, Freedom to Write and International Programs
PEN American Center