censorship

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• 9/25/2022
  

  Around the World, Censorship of Historians is Tied to Attacks on Democracy

  by Ruben Zeeman

  Teachers and researchers of history are under attack – sometimes literally – by regimes who seek to make history a foundational element of their legitimacy and authority.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  9/20/2022
  

  Book Bans Reflect Outdated Views on How Children Read

  by Trisha Tucker

  Research shows that children are not vessels into which books pour ideas, but co-creators of meaning as they read and process a book. Yet today's moral panic imagines books breaking down barriers between innocent childhood and a corrupt world. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/16/2022
  

  American Library Association: Book Bans Accelerating

  “It represents an escalation, and we’re truly fearful that at some point we will see a librarian arrested for providing constitutionally protected books on disfavored topics,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the office of intellectual freedom at the library association.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/12/2022
  

  Today's Book Bans Might be Most Dangerous Yet

  by Jonna Perrillo

  Today's book banners have broadened their attention from communist themes in textbooks and are attacking young adult literature titles that students are choosing to read, a much more significant intrusion on freedom of thought. 

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• SOURCE: Miami Herald
  9/12/2022
  

  Cuban-American Playwright Censored by Miami-Dade Schools—Is it over "Don't Say Gay"?

  Columnist Fabiola Santiago argues that the censorship of the Cuban-American writer's plays by local schools shows that Cuban Americans can't expect the state's escalating culture wars to leave them alone. 

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• SOURCE: PEN America
  8/17/2022
  

  PEN America: The Nation's Censored Classrooms

  by Jeremy C. Young and Jonathan Friedman

  "The restrictions and chilling effects of gag order laws threaten to destroy the climate of open inquiry required in free and democratic educational institutions."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/17/2022
  

  States Curtailing Students' Access to Books, Ideas

  In many states, school librarians will be less free to recommend books, and students less free to explore them, with potentially serious consequences for educational quality and personal and intellectual growth, experts argue. 

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• SOURCE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
  8/16/2022
  

  Texas District Removes Graphic Version of Diary of Anne Frank

  “It’s disgusting. It’s devastating. It’s legitimate book banning, there’s no way around it,” Laney Hawes, a parent of four children in the Keller district, told JTA about the order. “I feel bad for the teachers and the librarians.”

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/9/2022
  

  Fighting Back Against Book Banners

  by Margaret Sullivan

  Attempts to ban books from public libraries are a threat to democratic culture and should alarm all Americans, argues Post columnist Margaret Sullivan. 

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  6/4/2022
  

  Authors of Color Disproportionately Targeted by Book Bans

  Angry parents yelling at school board meetings present a picture of these authors' work that they find unrecognizable. Read what several targeted authors say about their books. 

• 
• 6/5/2022
  

  Regimes Around the World are Manipulating History and Threatening Historians

  by Ruben Zeeman

  Official attempts to hinder bona fide historical research and debate through legislation or other means, are the first signals that history is at risk of abuse – such efforts abroad are also a warning to historians in America. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/17/2022
  

  The Next Front of the Culture War? Your Public Library

  "Conservative activists in several states, including Texas, Montana and Louisiana have joined forces with like-minded officials to dissolve libraries’ governing bodies, rewrite or delete censorship protections, and remove books outside of official challenge procedures."

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• SOURCE: Reuters
  4/7/2022
  

  PEN Report: More than 1,000 Books Banned in US

  PEN found that 86 school districts had removed 1,145 titles from their shelves over the last nine months, some permanently and others while an investigation was under way.

• 
• SOURCE: CBS News
  2/22/2022
  

  Poll: Clear Majority Rejects Book Bans

  Polling shows Americans reject banning books that address racism and believe in the value of difficult lessons. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  2/17/2022
  

  My Life With Maus

  by Tom Engelhardt

  Although the aftermath of the Tennessee "Maus" controversy involved a flood of donated copies sent to the local community and the book's return to the bestseller charts, the revival of book-banning sentiments bodes ill for the course of the nation. 

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• SOURCE: Vulture
  2/14/2022
  

  Art Spiegelman Interviewed on Maus, Art and History, and his Missing Glasses

  The graphic memoirist says that the Tennessee controversy probably doesn't reflect any antisemitic bigotry, but a desire to find a catharsis that fixes the horror of the Holocaust instead of recognizing it as ongoing. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/2/2022
  

  Book Bans Target Teaching the History of Oppression

  by Marilisa Jiménez Garcia

  Children, particularly those who are part of minority groups, have never been spared from horrors, in history or today. The rhetoric of book-banners is rooted in a privileged viewpoint and serves the interests of inequality today.

• 
• SOURCE: NBC News
  2/1/2022
  

  Books on Race, Sexuality Disappearing from Texas School Shelves

  In a sample of 100 Texas school districts, 75 formal requests to remove books from libraries were filed between September and December (only one was filed in those districts a year before). But some students are fighting back. 

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• SOURCE: Minneapolis Star-Tribune
  1/31/2021
  

  Now Conservatives are the "Discomfort Police"

  by Jeffrey Aaron Snyder

  The left should not be surprised to see the right weaponizing the concept of discomfort to justify a spate of legislation restricting the teaching of difficult historical subjects around race and historical conflict. 

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• SOURCE: Substack
  1/27/2022
  

  Maus in Tennessee

  by Jeet Heer

  The stated objections to Maus – profanity, nudity, filial disrespect, violence – are impossible to separate from the fact that the book is a graphic history of the Holocaust.