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
  • Rikers Island visitors sue NYC over CO’s claim that their books were soaked in drugs | New York Post
• 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
  • DHS wants to expand airport face regcognition to include U.S. citizens | TechCrunch
• ‘Why Is My City Monitoring Me?’ | Law360
• Senate takes another stab at privacy law with proposed COPRA bill | Ars Technica
  • Senators’ last-minute push on privacy | Axios
  • Congress is split over your right to sue Facebook | The Verge
  • 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
  • ‘We wanted our patrons back.’ Public libraries scrap late fines To alleviate inequity | NET (NE)
• 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
  • Advocates call for more diversity in NYC school reading lists | AM New York
• 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

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

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