Intellectual Freedom News 1/13/17
January 13, 2017 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Interns
Intellectual Freedom Highlights
- Louder Together | PEN America; “PEN America hosts the flagship New York City event of a national rallying effort under the banner of WRITERS RESIST. This literary protest will bring together hundreds of writers and their fellow New Yorkers on the steps of the New York Public Library in a collective stand to defend free expression, reject hatred, and uphold truth in the face of lies and misinformation.”
- Student rights: Not to be forgotten | OIF Blog; “At a Des Moines Public Schools School Board meeting last month, board members wore black armbands to honor the legacy of students’ right to free expression, including the right to peaceful political protest.”
- Resolved: Become an Intellectual Freedom champion in 2017 | OIF Blog; “Alongside your personal resolutions for 2017, consider making several professional goals related to intellectual freedom.”
Censorship
- UN backs school over ban on offensive book on slavery | Prensa Latina (Connecticut); “The United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent has backed today a U.S. school that decided to remove from its teaching program an ‘offensive’ book with distortions in the treatment of slavery.”
- What is it about these two books that is so dangerous?: A look at the Utah State Prison’s banned books list | The Salt Lake Tribune; (The 48 Laws of Power; The Art of Seduction)
- NCAC objects to bill requiring parental notification prior to teaching of sex ed. materials | NCAC
Access
- Record shares of Americans now own smartphones, have home broadband | Pew Research Center
- Douglas County plans to close its libraries this spring |KLCC (Oregon)
- WhiteSpace Project could grow rural broadband access | Library Journal
- Libraries join national initiative to transform public housing into book-rich environments | School Library Journal
- The journey to greater access | Knowledge Quest
Privacy
- Fight for email Privacy Act passage begins now…again | ALA District Dispatch
- Coalition raises privacy concerns on Sessions nomination for Attorney General | Center for Democracy & Technology
- HTTPS on NYTimes.com | The New York Times
- N.S.A. gets more latitude to share intercepted communications | The New York Times
- Trump’s CIA nominee wants a massive surveillance database of Americans | PCWorld
Internet Filtering
- Chapel Hill Town Council to ponder online filter at library | The Herald Sun (NC)
- Chapel Hill library wants Internet filters to access more money | The News & Observer (NC)
- Law requires content filtering on school and library networks | Ed Tech
Net Neutrality
- Network neutrality in the crosshairs | ALA District Dispatch
- Author of anti-net neutrality “Internet Freedom Act” gains leadership position | Ars Technica
- FCC chief accuses AT&T and Verizon of violating net neutrality – but it probably doesn’t matter | PCWorld
Academic Freedom
- Who’s really placing limits on free speech? | New York Times
- A supplement maker tried to silence this Harvard doctor — and put academic freedom on trial | Stat News
- If colleges keep killing academic freedom, civilization will die, too | The Washington Post
- On U.S. campuses, free inquiry is taking a beating | Philanthropy Roundtable
First Amendment Issues
- Congress is feuding over a teen’s controversial painting that dramatizes events in Ferguson | Vox
- Legislating against “fake news” leaders us down a path to censorship | Open Media
- Backpage shuts down adult section, citing government press and unlawful censorship campaign | Los Angeles Times; “Backpage.com, one of the world’s largest classified ad websites and a frequent target in the political battle against sex trafficking, closed its adult ads section Monday in the United States, claiming to be the victim of a government witch hunt.”
- IMDB.com steps up First Amendment ight with California over law shielding actor birth dates | The Wall Street Journal Law Blog
- Nat Hentoff: Remembering a First Amendment absolutist | CBLDF
- Free speech advocates, publishers wrestle with questions of censorship | NPR
Around the Web
- Never neutral; Critical librarianship and technology | American Libraries
- The library lockout at our elementary school | The Wall Street Journal (Chicago)
- Philadelphia School District librarians: A species nearly extinct? | The Inquirer (PA); “How many full-time, certified librarians would you guess one of the nation’s largest school systems – a district with 220 schools and 134,000 students – employs? One hundred? Two hundred? Not even close. Eight certified, full-time school librarians staff Philadelphia School District buildings.”
- Rumors of the demise of books greatly exaggerated | Gallup
- The triumph of ignorance over self-interest | Virginian Pilot; “A functioning democracy requires that citizens make informed choices — which voters can’t do if their information sources are ideologically monochromatic. Motivated ignorance replaces the marketplace of ideas with two isolated, noncompeting monopolies. It’s a scary situation if the one thing both sides have in common is a lack of curiosity about what the other thinks.”
- Booksmith boycotts book by Milo Yiannopoulos | SFist
International Issues
- Queen Mary University students want to ban newspapers in the name of ‘diversity and inclusivity’ | Reason
- In rare move, court suspends publication of best-seller on Abe-linked conservative lobby group | Japan Times
- Iran’s porn censorship broke browsers as far away as Hong Kong | The Verge
- There are good reasons why democracies don’t like banning books | The Dominion Post
- Swiss-U.S. privacy shield announced | Privacy & Information Security Law Blog
Office for Intellectual Freedom News
- OIF and Intellectual Freedom in Atlanta | OIF Blog; “ALA’s 2017 Midwinter Meeting is in Atlanta, GA, and the Office for Intellectual Freedom will be there staffing the different committee meetings and programs. Committee meetings and programs are open to any attendee, and are often a good way to learn about the business of ALA and its intellectual freedom initiatives.”
ALA News
- ALA urges senators to probe Sessions on privacy | ALA District Dispatch
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