November 3, 2017 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Interns

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• 50 Years of Intellectual Freedom | American Libraries; “This December, OIF is celebrating 50 years of fighting for intellectual freedom: half a century of championing ­libraries, finding allies within the literary community, and aiding librarians in times of high anxiety. It’s an evolving role to be cherished and safeguarded.”
• The Right to Write: OIF Blogging Opportunities for 2018 | Intellectual Freedom Blog; “The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) is seeking bloggers for 2018!”
• Policy and Public Pressure: Technology Companies Respond to Charlottesville | Intellectual Freedom Blog; “The events in Charlottesville have heightened public awareness of white supremacist organizations and their music, merchandise and online presence. There has also been a renewed interest in leading technology company platforms and the ways in which they host and profit from the activities of groups that identify with white supremacy.”

Censorship

• Dixie schools’ book ban raises eyebrows | Gainsville Sun
• When ‘Mockingbird’ was banned in Mississippi, Tenafly students took up pen to protest | NorthJersey.com
• Censorship in academia stunts progress | Daily Trojan
• The Problem With ‘Problematic’ | New York Review of Books
• EFF to ICANN’s registrars: Don’t pick up the censor’s pen | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• ‘The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian’ returned to Illinois school curriculum after challenge | Bleeding Cool
• Did the EPA censor its scientists? | New Orleans Public Radio
• Who are the real censors? Republicans lean toward banning LGBTQ characters in books | Newsweek
• Censored on campus: Paul Rucker’s exhibition on race in America| NCAC

Privacy

• ALA joins 26 orgs to urge Congress to oppose the USA LIBERTY Act unless  the “backdoor search” loophole is closed | Demand Progress
• Your Data Is Being Manipulated | danah boyd
• A Chance to Control Domestic Spying | The New Republic
• The iOS privacy loophole that’s staring you right in the face | Naked Security
• App developer access to iPhone X face data spooks some privacy experts | Reuters
• Seattle woman says her identity has been stolen 15 times since Equifax data breach | Huffington Post
• Do Not Track Implementation Guide Launched | Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Florida Sets Sights on Becoming Cybersecurity Front-Runner | Government Technology
• HHS Office for Civil Rights issues guidance on how HIPAA allows information sharing to address the opioid crisis | HHS.gov
• FDA urges patient data access with medical device information | Health Security
• See this week’s additional privacy news and updates on the Choose Privacy Week blog.

Access

• Author: Libraries need more transgender books | The Wichita Eagle (KS)
  • Author of transgender book for kids will speak at WSU | The Wichita Eagle (KS)
• Google limits access to airfare data, risking antitrust concerns | Wired

Libraries and Hate Crimes

• Swastika found in Reading Public Library | Boston Globe
• ‘All Muslims dead’ tagged at Kent-Meridian High School | My Northwest (WA)
• New case of hateful graffiti investigated at Davis High School | Fox 40 (CA)

Free Press, Social Media, and Fake News

• Congress asks tech to face hard truths about Russian meddling | Wired
• Americans ‘evenly split’ over need to regulate Facebook and other big tech | The Guardian
• The College Kids Doing What Twitter Won’t | Wired; “Bhat and Phadte, 20-year-old students who study computer science at UC Berkeley, decided to launch a data-driven counterattack, aiming to do what Twitter itself has not: publicly expose alleged bot accounts right there on the platform for the world to see.”
• Info Wars: Inside the left’s online efforts to out white supremacists | ProPublica
• Do Russian-backed bots qualify for free speech? | Daily Beast
• Americans Spend More Time Accessing News Via Social Media, Trust It Less | Media Post

Net Neutrality and Broadband Access

• FTC testifies before House Judiciary Subcommittee on Net Neutrality | FTC
• Verizon has a new strategy to undermine online privacy and net neutrality | Ars Technica

Internet Filters

• Hack-It Ralph? Circle with Disney parental filter filled with exploitable flaws | SC Media
• BOE to vote on installing computer content filtering programs | Derby Informer (KS) “The content filtering program would alert district staff if students made comments on social media about hurting themselves or bullied others who did. For example, if a student posted that he or she planned to “end it all,” Securly would send an alert.”

Academic Freedom/ Campus Speech

• UNC committee sides with professor on sports history course that includes recent scandal | News & Observer (NC)
• Will enforcing free speech on campus bring freedom or tyranny? | Times Higher Education
• Oxford academic claims Trump protest led to ‘excommunication’ | The Guardian
• Eight arrested in protests as Milo Yiannopoulos speaks at Cal State Fullerton | Los Angeles Times
• Elizabeth Warren says campus free speech means no censorship or violence | The Intercept
• When the academy retreats | U.S. News and World Report
• An ‘academic freedom syllabus’ aims to prepare scholars to face online harassment | The Daily Pennsylvanian
• The pernicious silencing of the adjunct faculty | Chronicle of Higher Education
• Impeachment of Black student leader raises uncomfortable questions at Clemson U. | Chronicle of Higher Education
• A radical college’s public meltdown | Chronicle of Higher Education

First Amendment Issues

• Indiana experts: Though brief, First Amendment poses complexities | New and Tribune (IN)
• Free speech or crime? Judge weighs UVM racist threat allegations | Burlington Free Press (VM)
• Older people and Republicans, threatening free speech | Washington Post
• Breeding antifa | Boston Globe
• Is supporting racists’ free speech rights the same as being a racist? | Cato Institute
• White nationalist Richard Spencer is barred from speaking at a federal building | New York Times
• The bipartisan war on free speech is self-destructive | Washington Examiner

Around the Web

• To Ban a Mockingbird? | US News
• Intellectual Freedom 101… Again | Intellectual Freedom Blog
• Medieval Censorship, Nudity And The Revealing History Of The Fig Leaf | Forbes
• Guest commentary — Intellectual freedom and the ‘Freedom to Read’ | Petoskey News (MI)
• 15 Controversial Times Superheroes Were Censored | CBR
• Primitive Artist’s Archive Can’t Block Sale of Children’s Book | Courthouse News
• Order placed for controversial novel | Thousand Oaks Acorn (CA)
• When she was a girl, Jim Crow laws kept her from libraries. She grew to run them. | Washington Post
• What does YouTube value more: Its ideology, or free speech? | Capital Research Center
• She ranted about Muslim Uber drivers after NYC attack. Now she can’t use Uber at all | Sacramento Bee (CA)

International Issues

• Springer Nature blocks access to certain articles in China | Reuters
• India: Two writers intimidated, threatened, attacked and censored | Free Muse
• Russia’s independent media cite intimidation as the new censorship | Christian Science Monitor
• South Sudan media regulator bans press groups, raising censorship fears | VOA
• China censors block Hunger Games-style PUBG video game because it ‘deviates’ from socialist values | Newsweek
• Newly banned Islamic books contain undesirable, harmful teachings: MCI | Today Online (Singapore)
• China’s new judicial interpretation expands and clarifies privacy protection | Lexology
• ‘You will irk the examiner’: Students claim they feel pressured to pander to anti-Brexit bias in essays | The Telegraph
• Saudi Arabia withdraws novel after readers complain of ‘pornographic’ passages | South China Morning Post

ALA News

• ALA to launch Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Great Stories Club with $1.1 million grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• Promoting Healthy Communities: A Health Information Initiative | Public Library Association (PLA) and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM)
• ALA unveils shortlist for 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction
• Webinar – Privacy to Pornography: What Staff Need to Know about Intellectual Freedom (Free for FTRF and IFRT members)

---

Subscribe to future issues of Intellectual Freedom News, a free weekly compilation of news delivered to your inbox by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, including

• • • current book challenges in libraries and schools
    • articles about privacy, internet filtering and censorship
    • ALA activities, conferences and institutes, products, online learning opportunities, awards and grants, international exchanges, and more
    • how to get involved and make the most of what ALA offers

You can also find us at Facebook, Twitter, and online. Or email us at oif@ala.org