Tag: intellectual freedom
What is a “Challenge”?
Intellectual freedom encompasses the freedom to hold, receive and disseminate ideas. Keep reading for more intellectual freedom definitions from ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Explore Intellectual Freedom in these #ALAAC21 Sessions!
The ALA Annual Conference offers numerous opportunities to explore and celebrate intellectual freedom. This post highlights fourteen intellectual freedom-themed conference sessions, including live panel discussions and on-demand sessions, the Intellectual Freedom Awards Celebration, and business meetings. As you plan your #ALAAC21 calendar, consider adding these sessions to your schedule!
An Invitation to Danger: Perspectives on Intellectual Freedom and Information War
The first task of information warfare is to recognize when you’re in one, because you might not be fighting the information war, but the information war is fighting you. This essay revisits the wartime writing of Archibald MacLeish, poet-warrior, playwright-propagandist, and Librarian of Congress from 1939 through 1944. It explores whether we’re experiencing an information war now, and how the library community can respond.
The FBI and Student Surveillance: A Sputnik for Our Time
A recent push by the FBI for US universities to monitor Chinese students is alarming – but this siren rings with a different tonality depending on your listening equipment. To Senator Mark Warner, it’s about national security. But to me, it sounds a whole lot like government-sanctioned censorship.
Academe, Heal Thyself: Reflections on the Free Speech Executive Order Discussion at ACRL
By: guest contributor Sarah Hartman-Caverly – The true threats to intellectual freedom on college and university campuses cannot be solved by outside intervention – most especially not by state intervention. In this post, Hartman-Caverly extends criticism of the recent Executive Order on free inquiry by challenging its emphasis on learner data tracking, and questions whether intellectual freedom can meaningfully exist without intellectual privacy.
The Public Library as a World Stage: An Analysis of Censorship
The common misconception that any library espouses the content of its collection and programming can lead to feelings of patron alienation. An imagining of the library as an equitable world stage can help to mitigate resulting acrimony directed at this institution.
Bill of Rights Day and Intellectual Freedom
Today, December 15, 2018, we celebrate the 227th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Bill of Rights Day on this day in 1941 to honor and observe the preservation of our individual rights.
Hey! Those Don’t Belong to You: Why You Shouldn’t Burn Library Books
It also demonstrates cowardice and intolerance. If you disagree with someone’s viewpoint, you should have the courage and respect to share and discuss the reasons behind your beliefs. And more importantly, you should have the courage and respect to listen to ideas other than your own.
Where does Kavanaugh stand on privacy, net neutrality, 1st Amendment?
Like a good proportion of the country, I have been doing my best to catch bits and pieces of the Senate hearings regarding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the US Supreme Court. When I sat down to write this blog I wondered, what impact might Kavanaugh’s confirmation have on intellectual freedom issues?
A War of the Roses: Should Libraries Take A Stance on 3-D Gun Printing?
Libraries provide public access to 3-D printers. Given the juxtaposition between our professional obligations and social responsibility, libraries should make their policies very clear with regard to printing 3-D guns.