Intellectual Freedom News 9/29/2017
September 29, 2017 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Interns
Intellectual Freedom Highlights
- Celebrate September 24-30; Free Downloads, Rebel Reader Twitter Tournament, and Stand for the Banned. #BannedBooksWeek
- Inside Tavern 451: Conversations from the banned | IF Blog, “In celebration of Banned Books Week, University of West Florida’s Britt McGowan constructed conversations between banned book characters, using only the words their authors gave them. Who’s your favorite character? Reply in the comments! “
Censorship
- Library’s on-off-on ‘Freedom of the Press’ exhibit | Boston Globe (MA)
- Controversy over sexually explicit book in Scottsdale school library | Fox10Phoenix.com (AZ), l8r, g8r
- Can we talk about banned Trump books? | Publishers Weekly (CA), Not My President: The Anthology of Dissent
- Jefferson County won’t ban class novel | Idaho Ed News; 1984
- The Guggenheim bows to animal-rights censorship | The New York Post
- Defending “This Day in June” | IF Blog
- ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ complaints come amid Banned Books Week | Reading Eagle (PA)
- Wyomissing School District to keep ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ on summer reading list | Reading Eagle (PA)
- Banning books like ’13 Reasons Why’ makes it harder for teens to open up to adults, author says | PBS NewsHour
- Some Buncombe County parents upset about school reading assignment | ABC News WLOS (NC); The Bluest Eye
- Pratt Library deletes, apologizes for tweet posing black kids in mock mugshots for banned books promotion | Baltimore Sun; The photobooth display was also removed.
Banned Books Week
- Sex, Politics and the Banned Books of 2016 | New York Times
- Words Have Power | NCTE
- Project Censored helps celebrate the Right to Read and the 35th Anniversary of Banned Books Week | Project Censored
- Column: Banned Books Week seeks to douse flames of culture war | Chicago Tribune
- Banned Books Week: Banned/Challenged Comics to read right now | Book Riot
- Jamie Larue Talks Banned Books Week on The Ben Joravsky Show | WCPT 820
- You Are Forbidden To Read This! An Overview of Banned Books | Los Angeles Public Library
- Banned Books Week: Author Tanya Lee Stone on Why Censorship is Heartbreaking | NCAC
- Books behind bars | PBS American Experience
- The top ten banned books Atlanta librarians think you should read | AJC Blog Talk of the Town
- Who gets to choose which childhood experiences are ‘appropriate’? | Education Week
- Why do comics get challenged? | Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
- Banned Books Week: Comics Creators on Censorship | Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
- Banned books week in US emphasizes Freedom to Read | Voice of America
- Banned Books Week: ‘In 2017, censorship comes from an outraged public’ | The Guardian
- Why your kid should read banned books | Salon
- Banned Books Week: Why are illustrated books being challenged more than ever? | The Washington Post
- Banned Books Week: How censorship through the decades cracked down on literary sex, drugs… and poo poo head | The Independent
- Banned Books Week: YA author Alan Gratz on giving kids the tools to resist censorship | National Coalition Against Censorship
- Banned Books Week: Explore banned and challenged books | The Fire
- Salt Lake County readers celebrate banned books and intellectual freedom | Salt Lake Tribune (check out their musical video)
- How Bill Cosby Ruined a Perfectly Good Banned Books Week | School Library Journal
- Office for Intellectual Freedom takes over ALA’s Instagram for Banned Books Week
Privacy
- US Homeland security will start collecting social media info on all immigrants October 18th | Gizmodo
- A History of FISA Section 702 Compliance Violations | Open Technology Institute (Interactive Timeline)
- Most Americans think the government could be monitoring their phone calls and emails | Pew Research Center
- Another court tells police: Want to use a stingray? Get a warrant | Ars Technica
- After Snowden—surveillance, protecting privacy, and reforming the NSA | Brookings Institute
- Privacy v Technology Forum | Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
- See this week’s additional privacy news and updates on the Choose Privacy Week blog.
Access
- My journey to the heart of the FOIA request | Longreads
- How to hot spot | Library Journal
- Library launches visual resources kit | University of Michigan; “The U-M Library and Press have released a new collection of resources that will support the efforts of authors, editors, publishers, and arts organizations seeking to make their publications and collections more accessible to people with visual impairments and other print disabilities”
- As Google Fights Fake News, Voices on the Margins Raise Alarm | New York Times
Net Neutrality
- Survey: Consumers favor strong net neutrality rules | Consumer Reports
- AT&T seeks Supreme Court review on net neutrality rule | Bloomberg
Academic Freedom/ Campus Speech
- ‘Colonialism’ article flap highlights push for transparency in publishing | Inside Higher Ed; “Third World Quarterly is in no hurry to pull “The Case for Colonialism,” despite author Bruce Gilley’s request last week that the journal withdraw his contentious essay.“
- ‘Junk science’: Experts cast doubt on widely cited college free speech survey | The Guardian
- A controversial critic of the Black Lives Matter movement spoke at Penn amid student protests | The Daily Pennsylvanian
- Free speech is a virtue. Spending millions to enable hatred isn’t | Los Angeles Times
- A free-speech divide | Chronicle of Higher Education
- Sessions’ Justice Dept. will weigh in on free-speech cases. What should campuses expect? | Chronicle of Higher Education
- U.S. Justice Department weights in on campus free speech lawsuit | Pew Stateline
First Amendment Issues
- A nation of snowflakes | The Atlantic
- Is the First Amendment Obsolete? | Knight First Amendment Institute
- The First Amendment assault you may not have heard about | Radio Television Digital News Association
- Man banned from Cincinnati library shows up at news conference announcing apology, receives apology | Cinncinnati.com
- Milo, Ann Coulter, and “Free Speech Week” add up to the right’s best troll yet | Wired
Hate Speech
- Arlington Heights library cancels immigrant rights workshop amid threats, hate calls | ABC 7 Chicago
Around the Web
- Hate crime victims can use new free web application to get help | ABA Journal
- Why big tech is clashing with internet freedom advocates | Wired
- ‘Racist propaganda’: Librarian rejects Melania Trump’s gift of Dr. Seuss books | Washington Post
- New Florida law should have advocates of intellectual freedom watching closely | IF Blog
- Banned, burned, and now rebuilding: Comics collections in libraries | OUPblog
International Issues
- Chris Selley: Libraries feel the heat on freedom of speech | National Post (Canada)
- China blocks WhatsApp, broadening online censorship | The New York Times
- How one Syrian fought to the death for a free internet | Wired
- A business in banned books | IF Blog
ALA News
- Accessibility and Libraries: An American Libraries Live Webcast
- Libraries Transform through Literacy: AEFL Week 2017
- Your Efforts Are Helping to #saveIMLS | American Libraries
- Webinar (United for Libraries): Troubled Library Boards: Prevention and Survival | Tuesday, October 17, 2017 @ 2 pm EST
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One thought on “Intellectual Freedom News 9/29/2017”
In her fairly misleading opinion piece on September 22, Kit-Bacon Gressit claims the anthology Not My President (of which she happens to be a contributing writer) was banned by her local library. Not only does she fail to disclose any proof that her book was actually ‘banned,’ she also does not mention the book has yet to be published, and fails to note the books is basically self-published via a kickstarter. The book is not reviewed or published by any established publisher, and the website for the book even mentions profits from purchases will go to support a number of political causes.
As a public librarian (not in Fallbrook)it is safe to say no competent librarian working with very limited taxpayer dollars would order a self-published, unreviewed, politically motivated work before it was even released or reviewed. This appears to be nothing more than a misleading ploy from Ms. Gressit to have her local library carry a book to which she contributed.