Intellectual Freedom News 12/6/19
Highlights
- Hearing from Deborah Caldwell-Stone, New Director of the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom and Executive Director of Freedom to Read Foundation | OIF Blog
- ‘Share your censorship story: OIF encourages library workers to report challenges, bans | OIF Blog
- Upcoming eCourses offer in-depth instruction on the First Amendment and Privacy Law | OIF Blog
Censorship
- The Censorship War in Loudoun County | OIF Blog
- Commentary: Loudoun County students have the right to see themselves in stories | Loudoun County Times (VA); “True: All parents have the right to influence their own child’s education. Equally true: No parent has the right to dictate the education of all children based on their own personal beliefs.”
- Steamboat family recruits help of religious rights attorney over howl controversy | Craig Press (CO)
- WV library should immediately return LGBTQ children’s book to shelf | Fairness WV
- From the US to Peru, these ‘parent groups’ targeting sex education are all backed by the Christian right | OpenDemocracy
- City not book smart over smuggling ban at Rikers Island | New York Daily News
- Prisoner rights groups claim Kansas prisons unfairly block books | KNSS (KS)
- DC Comics pulls controversial image from Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child promo | EW
- Music censorship back with full force in Miami | Havana Times
- Chinese Communist Party is censoring people in America for talking about Hong Kong | Daily Wire
Privacy and Cybersecurity
- Education before Regulation: Empowering Students to Question their Data Privacy | EDUCAUSE Review
- I ditched Google for DuckDuckGo. Here’s why you should too | Wired
- DHS Withdraws Proposal to Require Airport Facial Scans for U.S. Citizens | The Washington Post
- ‘Why Is My City Monitoring Me?’ | Law360
- Senate takes another stab at privacy law with proposed COPRA bill | Ars Technica
- Ad industry unveils wish list for privacy legislation | Digital News Daily
Additional privacy posts, news, and updates are available at the Choose Privacy Every Day blog.
Access
- Libraries, in a move for equity, scrap late fees | Nonprofit Quarterly
- Library advocates outraged over e-book restrictions | Long Island Weekly
- Different perceptions concerning the homeless and the library | The Courier-Herald
- Justices debate allowing state law to be “hidden behind a pay wall” | Ars Technica
- Installing free Wifi to help count rural communities of color in 2020 census | NPR
- Improved access to open source intelligence urged | Federation of American Scientists
Net Neutrality & Broadband Access
- Justice Thomas, preemption, and state net neutrality | American Enterprise Institute
- We need to save .ORG from arbitrary censorship by halting the private equity buy-out | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fake News, Free Press, Social Media
- Why YouTube won’t ban Trump’s misleading ads about Biden | Wired
- Should social media companies be legally responsible for misinformation and hate speech? 2020 Democrats weigh in. | Vox
- Zuckerberg Defends Refusal to Censor Political Ads: ‘People Can See for Themselves what Politicians Are Saying’ | National Review
- How does YouTube handle the site’s misinformation, conspiracy theories and hate? | 60 Minutes
- TikTok apologizes and reinstates banned US teen | BBC News
Academic Freedom & Campus Speech
- Is the threat to academic freedom growing? | Chronicle of Higher Education
First Amendment & Free Speech
- Reflections on ‘the most powerful dissent in American history’ one century later | OIF Blog
- Supreme Court allows climate scientists defemation suit to proceed | Ars Technica
- Federal judge rules in favor of man with vanity plate, ‘IM GOD‘ | Freedom Forum Institute
- The First Amendment has protected President Donald J. Trump | Freedom Forum Institute
- Illinois Supreme Court strikes down social media ban for sex offenders | Sauk Valley Media
Around the Web
- More than 80% of books in NYC schools curriculum for pre-k to 8th grade written by white authors, report says | New York Daily News
- Consider nominating a defender of intellectual freedom | OIF Blog
- Resaerch confirms value of school libraries | School Library Journal
- 15 very important books that were once banned in schools | PopSugar
- Citing academic freedom, Supreme Court pronounces PhiLSAT unconstitutional | PhilStar
- Finger guns & ‘just cousins’: How anime dubs overcame pointless censorship | CBR.com
- Tis the season for celebrating freedom | Freedom Forum Institute
- Women defendents contributed mightily to First Amendment jurisprudence | Freedom Forum Institute
International Issues
- Lithuania continues Soviet-style censorship 30 years post-independence | The Jerusalem Post
- US condemns Iranian censorship as Tehran manufactures narrative for recent protests| Iran News Update
- Ukraine bans import of Russian book for children | Kyiv Post
- Indian children’s books are speaking fearlessly. Withdrawing in face of criticism is not the answer | Scroll
- Want to build democracies? Then build libraries | Financial Times; “Populists are starving public libraries of funds, while India’s rightwing BJP is building ‘party libraries’ for its members”
- Meeting room policy protests in Toronto, Vancouver | Library Journal
- ‘Never a good look’: Tony Jones critical of ABC ‘censorship’ | Sydney Morning Herald
ALA News
- 32 guides for teaching banned books
- YALSA announces 2020 Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults finalists
- YALSA announces 2020 William C. Morris Award finalists
- ALA announces 2020 class of Emerging Leaders
- New National Library Week materials and more from ALA Graphics
- Call for nominations for the Gerald Hodges Intellectual Freedom Chapter Relations Award—deadline January 1
- Rainbow Round Table seeks nominations for outstanding service to the LGBTQIA+ community—deadline December 30
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