Intellectual Freedom News

October 7, 2016

Censorship

• MO; Contemporary Art Museum St Louis; Editorial: Censoring art could limit museums to smiley-face paintings and pretty flowers | St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• International; Textbook withdrawn after referencing Palestinian resistance as ‘terrorists’ | Middle East Monitor
• FL; The Land; Parents upset by racial slur read out loud in school book at Marion County H.S. | WFTV9
• TN; Pearson seventh grade social studies and history textbook; Sullivan County parent complains about Islam curriculum, wants textbook change | WJHL11. School board member calls for removal of textbook over Islam content | Kingsport Times. Tennessee woman livid at school for teaching daughter about Islam | Carbonated TV. “Edmisten wants the Sullivan County Board of Education in Blountville, Tennessee, to remove a seventh-grade textbook from the course because it teaches basic lessons about Islam. ‘It is time as parents, teachers, and administrators, we stand up and take back our families, our schools, and our country,’ she told the school board. She added her daughter felt some assignments about Islamic beliefs violated her Christian beliefs, so the student refused to do some of the school work and failed those assignments.”
• TX; Texas prisons ban books by Shakespeare and Langston Hughes — but Hitler and David Duke are OK | Raw Story. Lawyer argues prison censorship goes too far | Peoria Public Radio. Texas bans 15,000 books from state prisons, including Dante’s “Inferno” and “The Color Purple” | Quartz. Banning books in prisons is not just wrong, it’s counterproductive | Signature
• TX; Trash and Iqbal; Argyle parents voice concern over 2 books in lesson plans | Denton Record-Chronicle

Libraries and Free Expression

• Library worker heroically defends patron’s free speech, is brutally arrested in library where he works | BORDC & DDF.
• Kansas City library officials defend employee arrested during public event | Kansas City Star. 
• Arrested Kansas City librarian gets support from national library group | Kansas City Star
• ALA President Julie Todaro responds to Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library free speech arrests | ALA News
• Oregon Library Association raises concerns about removal of election info from Douglas County Libraries website. | Oregon Library Association

Privacy

• Librarians stand again against FBI overreach | Hartford Courant
• Library heroes reunite to defeat FBI surveillance | District Dispatch
• Internet service providers would need customer permission to share sensitive data under FCC proposal | Los Angeles Times
• Fact sheet on broadband consumer privacy proposal | Federal Communications Commission
• Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence | Reuters
• Yahoo said to have aided U.S. email surveillance by adapting spam filter | New York Times
• Edward Snowden just made an impassioned argument for why privacy is the most important right | Business Insider
• Building a smart city? Have you thought about porn and privacy? | Bloomberg
• The real issue with New York’s free Internet kiosks isn’t porn | Washington Post

Internet Filtering

• Kids Get an Eyeful At Public Library | Los Feliz Ledger

Around the Web

• Unnatural selection: more librarians are self-censoring | School Library Journal
• SLJ controversial books survey: comments about book challenges | School Library Journal
• Banned Book Week roundtable: the evolution of censorship | Lee and Low Blog
• First Amendment lawyers: Lely can’t force students to stand during national anthem | Naples Daily News. “His order is a violation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette, a 1943 case involving Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose religion forbids worshiping or pledging allegiance to symbols. The court held in that ruling that government officials, which include public school employees, cannot demand participation in patriotic activities.”
• Taking a stand: how schools should respond to national-anthem protests | Education Week
• Melvin Burgess: censorship and the author | British Library
• How trolls Are ruining the internet | Time
• Facebook and Google: most powerful and secretive empires we’ve ever known | The Guardian
• For teachers and librarians, banned books can create balancing act | Education Week
• Mayor to remove ‘Christian’ statue from library after humanist group sues, report says | NJ.com

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