January 06, 2017 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Interns

Intellectual Freedom Highlights

• Burning Issues for Operation 451 | Inside Higher Ed; “Maybe this book, by someone who is so very accomplished at silencing others through his aggressive practice of “extreme free speech,” should be placed in libraries – next to books that talk back. Maybe the best response is making our libraries sites of spirited and generous conversation about what we actually mean when we talk about free speech.”
• Famous Writers Plan A ‘Literary Protest’ On The Steps Of The New York Public Library | Huffington Post; PEN America is preparing a “literary protest” on the steps of the New York Public Library. “Stand with PEN America to defend free expression, reject hate crimes and uphold truth in the face of lies and misinformation!” an Eventbrite listing, shared with PEN followers on Wednesday, proclaims. After the readings, a group of PEN America leaders will lead protesters to Trump Tower in order to present PEN America’s free expression pledge on the First Amendment to “a member of the President elect’s team.”
• Keeping the Flame Alive: 50th Anniversary of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom | AASL Knowledge Quest; “The Office for Intellectual Freedom is a proactive advocacy hub within ALA and has two new initiatives: Our Voices and ALA Bootcamp.”

Censorship

• City of Minneapolis censors public art coming to Nicollet Mall | City Pages (MN)
• Clay says he won’t remove painting in U.S. Capitol tunnel that has drawn criticism from police, others | St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
• Free speech groups release statement in support of publisher of Milo Yiannopoulos’ book | NCAC Blog

Academic Freedom

• Drexel, Twitter and Academic Freedom | Inside Higher Ed
• Boycott Battle Ahead | Inside Higher Ed

Access

• Equity, access, and individualization: 16 ideas | Knowledge Quest
• 5 questions to answer about OER use | eSchool News

Privacy

• Revenge porn victim wants US to adopt right to be forgotten’ law | New York Post
• Unsecure routers, webcams prompt feds to sue D-Link | Ars Technica
• Privacy is still alive and kicking in the digital age | Tech Crunch
• New York City officials defend shielding data of illegal immigrants | Wall Street Journal
• The EU’s privacy by default 2.0 | IAPP
• How to check if your library is leaking catalog searches to Amazon | Go to Hellman Blog
• Notable Privacy and Security Books from 2016 | Daniel Solove
• Ad Groups Petition Consumer Internet Privacy Rules, Call Opt-In Requirement ‘Onerous’ | Media Daily News

Internet Filtering

• Bleep Off: The Fight to Save Family-Friendly Movie Filtering | Christianity Today
• Filtering–The Man in the Middle | American Libraries

Net Neutrality

• FCC Republicans vow to gut net neutrality rules ‘as soon as possible‘ | Ars Technica
• Protecting net neutrality and the open internet: 2016 in review | EFF

First Amendment Issues

• What is the fate of the First Amendment in the digital age? | The Nation; “Freedoms of speech and of the press are some of the first victims of today’s surveillance regime. They are also some of the best defenses against it.”
• The 1A | A new NPR podcast dedicated to First Amendment and free expression issues
• 93 media professionals killed in 2016 | International Federation of Journalists
• Troopers to stop handing out religious grief book after Anderson atheist complaint | The State (SC)

Around the Web

• Banned Books and Blockbusters; How the publishing industry took on the taboo | The New Yorker; “The Constitution is a national Constitution, and the First Amendment applies everywhere, so the standard must be a ‘national standard.'”
• Silencing Milo; Every time the left tries to silence Milo instead of debate him, Milo wins. | Huffington Post
• Publishing Milo Yiannopoulos’ book is wrong. My magazine is fighting back | Guardian; “According to thousands of Twitter and Facebook users, our stance is equivalent to censorship, fascism and book-burning. By choosing not to review Simon & Schuster books for a year, they claim we’re contradicting both the first amendment and our own mission to cover “diverse voices” … However, free speech doesn’t protect anyone from repercussions in a free market.”
• ‘Mein Kampf’ Is Back — And There Are Reasons To Worry About That | Forward.com; “Yesterday, news broke that the new annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” had become a non-fiction best seller in Germany with around 85,000 copies sold. The book had previously been banned from publication … The fear is that the new publication will make Hitler’s propaganda more widely available, and therefore, more widely persuasive than if the book had stayed out of print. Those fears, however, after a year of publication, have gone unrealized.”
  “As Loriene Roy, former president of the American Library Association, pointed out in an interview on NPR a few years back, banning books makes people more curious as to their contents.”
• Richard Adams: Watership Down author once suggested he made children’s book ‘too dark’ | Independent
• Book explaining gender diversity to primary school children sparks furore | The Guardian
• UN panel: US school district right to pull textbook | Education Week
• Simon & Schuster stands by Milo Yiannopoulos book despite backlash | The Guardian
• Endangered species under GOP? Climate change information on the web | ProPublica
• Germany’s latest best seller? A critical version of ‘Mein Kampf’ | New York Times
• Groups offer support, recommendations for FOIA ‘Release to One, Release to All’ draft policy | NCAC blog
• Robert Spencer on the war on the First Amendment | Frontpage Magazine
• Newseum announces recipients of the 2017 free expression awards | Newseum Institute
• The books that shocked the world in 2016 | The New Daily (AU)
• Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning | Stanford History Education Group
• How to teach high-school students to spot fake news | Slate
• On that Stanford information literacy study | Brian Alexander (blog)
• The Smell Test: Educators can counter fake news with information literacy. Heres how. | School Library Journal
• We Need to Teach Kids How to Be Skeptical of the Internet | Motherboard

International Issues

• Apple pulls New York Times app from China app store | BBC
• China internet censorship: New York Times apps removed | NBC News
• Ukraine bans books promoting Russia | The Guardian

Office for Intellectual Freedom News

• Intellectual Freedom Sale: Ring in the New Year with some free speech attire! T-shirts are 10$ off at the OIF Winter Sale.
• New issue of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy now available online
• Webinar: Your guide to censorship reporting FREE

ALA News

• Library Bill of Rights poster is now available at the ALA Store
• ALA Town Hall: Library Advocacy and Core Values in Uncertain Times
• A Look at ALA’s Finances | American Libraries

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