Norwood, Colorado | Richmond, Illinois | Arlington, Texas | Houston, Texas | Overland Park, Kansas | Blue Springs, Missouri | Beaverton, Oregon | Cookeville, Tennessee | Loudoun County, Virginia | Fullerton, California | Lilburn, Georgia | Clinton, New York | New York, New York | Washington, D.C., see also (b) | Birmingham, England
Norwood, Colorado
Norwood Schools Superintendent Bob Conder apologized to students,
parents, staff and residents February 4 for pulling about two dozen
copies of the book Bless Me, Ultima, by Rodolfo Anaya, from a
freshman English class. But fifteen to twenty students still staged an
all-day sit-in in the school gym, taking turns reading from the book,
which has been recommended by first lady Laura Bush and was selected
last year for Mesa County's community-read project, to protest Conder's
actions.
“We stayed all day to prove the point and say it won't happen
again,” said freshman Skyler Hollinbech. “It was a violation of our
rights.”
Conder said none of the students who demonstrated would be punished
or counted as absent from class, and he offered to personally pay for
repurchasing the books if a new committee to review content approves
the book's reinstatement.
Students had planned to start the sit-in at 8 a.m. but the time was
pre-empted by Conder, who called a school assembly. Hollinbech said
Conder talked to the students and then took questions—“and I'm glad he
did, even though tempers flared.”
The dust-up over the book, a critically acclaimed novel about
coming of age in the Chicano culture, began about two weeks earlier
when two parents, John and Rhonda Oliver, complained about profanity in
the book. In response, Conder confiscated all of the copies of the book
from the ninth-grade English classroom and gave them to the couple, who
“tossed them in the trash,” John Oliver said.
“We put them in the trash can and it goes to a landfill,” Oliver said. “It was just our way of knowing it would
be gone.”
In his letter, Conder apologized for pulling the book “without
enough information on the content of the book,” without reading it
himself and without reading the school board's policy regarding
controversial issues. That policy, Conder wrote, calls for
“consideration . . . of a fair and balanced presentation of each of the
major aspects or sides of the issue.”
He said he has created a “broad-based” committee to review the
policy on teaching about controversial issues, to review current
curriculum and to make recommendations. That committee, he said, will
be asked to review Bless Me, Ultima.
A copy was left in the school library after the others were tossed for students “who choose to read it,” Conder said.
Stephanie Adams, a sixteen-year-old sophomore, said she was glad
Conder met with them “even though he was dodging our questions. He
wrote an apology and we appreciate that. We're going to get Ultima back,” she said. “If we don't, we'll take it from here.”
The book's author, Rudolfo Anaya of the University of New Mexico,
said that the freedom of democracy is learned in school systems.
“Parents have the right to monitor what their children read; however,
they do not have the right to tell others what they can read,” he said.
“That is un-American, undemocratic and uneducational.”
“I have hundreds of letters from students from all over the country
who have been moved by this book. I would love to go to Norwood with my
box full of letters,” Anaya added. The book has been banned before,
Anaya said.
President Bush awarded Anaya the National Medal of Arts in 2002. First lady Laura Bush has listed Bless Me, Ultima as ninth on a list of twelve books that she highly recommends.
Reported in: Denver Post, February 3; Rocky Mountain News, February 5.
Richmond, Illinois
Nippersink Public Library board members decided January 11 to keep the controversial DVD Happiness
on the shelf but limit its access to adults older than eighteen.
Trustees voted, four to two, after a discussion where audience members
freely offered their opinions.
The film was at the center of a controversy about freedom of speech
versus protecting children from obscene materials since a library
patron requested its withdrawal in July. Happiness contains pedophilia, rape and masturbation themes, but also is critically acclaimed.
Trustee Greg Cryns urged the board to vote on the film's status
rather than wait for the library attorney's legal opinion. “I don't
want to pay our attorney five hundred dollars to give us his opinion,”
Cryns said. “Let's just put it to a vote.”
Trustee Linda Geng said she conducted a poll of the residents of
Orchard Bluff subdivision in Spring Grove. “From the people I spoke to
there was nobody who wanted to pay for NC-17 materials with their tax
dollars,” she said.
Secretary Adam Metz made the motion to keep the film but limit its
access. Several board members paused for up to a minute and breathed
deeply before casting their vote.
Geng and Trustee Sandra Alldredge voted against the motion.
Trustees Cryns, Robert Johnston, Metz, and Vice President Carol Hanson
voted for it. President Don McCurry was absent.
“Finally,” muttered an audience member after the motion passed.
The board did not discuss how the library will enforce the age
restriction, but Metz said the restriction should not apply to
interlibrary loan patrons.
“If you send it to another library,” he said, “they can do what they want to do.”
Reported in: Northwest Herald, January 12.
Arlington, Texas
Interim City Manager Fred Greene canceled the showing of a movie
with sexual overtones January 21 that the Arlington Public Library had
planned to show at its independent film festival. Falling Angels,
based on a novel by a Canadian writer, contains female nudity, sex
scenes, adultery, adult language and situations, incest overtones and
unwanted pregnancy.
The library had been planning to launch an independent film
festival at the George W. Hawkes Central Library with three movies
scheduled from January 29 through March. The other two films, Buddy and Witnesses, were being reviewed.
“The film has been pulled,” Arlington Mayor Pro Tem Ron Wright
said. “The librarians were given strict content guidelines by Greene,
which are based upon the information that if a film cannot be shown to
someone under seventeen, then it would not be appropriate for the city
libraries of Arlington.”
The Canadian film was released in U.S. theaters October 31. It was
not rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. However, a
recommendation on the back cover of the video says it should not to be
shown to people under seventeen.
Adults-only films have never been shown at the Arlington libraries,
said Starr Krottinger, public services administrator for the Arlington
Public Library System. Reference librarian Linda Seitz said that she
previewed half of Falling Angels and is aware of the content. The films were aimed at college-age people, she said.
Library patron Carlos Medina, twenty-three, of Arlington said the
library wasn't the place for the film. “There are plenty of other
places to see that kind of stuff,” Medina said. “They don't have to
show it at the library.”
The film is no longer available for checkout.
Reported in: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 25.
Houston, Texas
On January 6, Houston Mayor Bill White ordered city librarians to keep How to Make Love Like a Porn Star,
by porn movie star Jenna Jameson, behind the counter. “I mean, I don't
think we need books like that in the library,” White said.
Somebody perusing the bestseller shelves at one city library
spotted the X-rated book on prominent public display and contacted his
city council member. “For me, it doesn't matter what my personal
opinion is on these types of books. This issue is about how we display
it and promote it and how we protect our children from these types of
books,” said Houston Councilmember Pam Holm.
During a City Council meeting January 7, Holm demanded that the
Robinson-Westchase Library branch in her west Houston district remove
the book from its best-seller display at the front of the library. The
library system is reviewing not just this particular book, but also its
policy on how and where books are displayed in city libraries.
“Customers generally expect us to have books that are on the
bestseller list. So they come in expecting that we'll have it,” said
Sandra Fernandez, library spokesperson. In fact, shortly after White's
decree every copy of the book was checked out of every city library in
Houston.
Reported in: KHOU-TV, January 6; Houston Chronicle, January 7.
Overland Park, Kansas
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri
is joining the fight to oppose the organization determined to get
fourteen books stricken from the curriculum in the Blue Valley school
district. The Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools (referred to
as ClassKC) submitted a petition to the school board In January with
five hundred signatures asking for the removal of the books primarily
because of vulgar language and sexual explicitness.
The ACLU held a meeting February 7 to get a sense of public opinion
regarding the issue and to lay out battle strategies to oppose
ClassKC's initiative. The Olathe branch of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People as well as the Prairie Village-based
MAINstream Coalition, which brings with it a host of other
organizations, are also joining the fight, it was announced at the
meeting.
Chekasha Ramsey, legal coordinator for the ACLU, said the petition
submitted to the school board by ClassKC was denied, but that it was
only because they did not follow the correct procedures. Dick
Kurtenbach, executive director of the ACLU said, “It is certainly not
over. It is nice to have a school board that is committed to its policy
and is committed to the judgment of its teachers in assigning
curriculum materials.”
Jason Miller said that in speaking with school board president,
John Fuller, he got the impression the school board is intimidated by
this issue. “They are a little bit concerned about the impact this
could have as far as future elections,” Miller said. Three board seats
in the Blue Valley school district will be up for grabs in the April 5
general election.
However, Fuller said reproduction of his comments may have been a
fabrication, saying, “I did say that there is not one board member who
wants to remove the books in question unless there is an educational
reason to do so, but if one of those books does not comply with our
approved curriculum or our revised policy 4600, I'll support the book's
removal since that is the way the system should work. We must let the
educators select the books based on our curriculum and policy 4600.”
Fuller added it is important for everyone to remember the policy in
place, and that books may or may not be removed after being filtered
through policy 4600, which requires learning resources to meet certain
criteria. The relatively new policy, implemented last September, has
not been used to filter all the books currently included in the
curriculum, as Fuller noted in the January board meeting.
Norm Ledgin, a Blue Valley parent, said while he has not always
been on the side of the school board, public support of the board
regarding this issue should be generated.
Caroline McKnight, executive director of the MAINstream Coalition,
said, “We feel like there are concerns on both sides of this issue that
need to be expressed in a forum outside of the constraints of a school
board meeting.”
Blue Valley North High School student Matt Novaria voiced his sense
of student opposition to ClassKC's efforts. He mentioned the Web site
initiated by Blue Valley North student Kerry McGuire, www.freewebs.com/studentsspeakout. Novaria said students have circulated a petition at school, and individuals can sign a petition via McGuire's Web site.
“I am aware of close to one hundred fifty to two hundred
signatures, but that is just within the Blue Valley North community,
and I think if we spread the word, then a lot more people would sign
it,” Novaria said of the petition circulating the school.
Henry E. Lyons, president of the Olathe branch of the NAACP, said,
“I would really like to work with the kids who are against this
censorship also because they are the ones ultimately who will be
reading or not reading the books.” Ledgin agreed, saying, “We should
support the student efforts as much as possible.”
Stephen Booser said, “I am mostly interested in how to stop
(ClassKC). I am not interested in how to talk to them or to explain
this stuff to them. I want to find out how to stop them particularly if
they become successful in petitioning to get books removed from the
curriculum.”
“We have never been shy to file lawsuits in cases of censorship,”
Kurtenbach said. “We wouldn't hesitate for a second if this talk
somehow becomes part of the school's policy.”
Reported in: Johnson County Sun, February 13.
Blue Springs, Missouri
Parents who want the Blue Springs school board to remove The Giver,
by Lois Lowry, from the middle-school reading list are questioning the
appropriateness of the entire reading curriculum. Board members will
make their final decision in March on whether Blue Springs students
will continue to read The Giver.
Board members were given the book to read in December. Since then,
they said, they have talked with district administrators, students and
other parents about the book but have not made up their minds.
“I'm viewed as a pretty conservative guy,” member Dale Walkup said.
“This is a very diverse board with diverse ideas. I'm sure this whole
thing will get pretty well picked apart before it is all said and done.”
While they are waiting to hear from the board about the fate of
Lowry's book, the parents who brought the challenge are putting
together a book list of their own. Going on their list are books that
are a part of the curriculum, but which they say are inappropriate for
children.
“Books—from elementary up—that if they were made into movies would
be rated R,” said Eileen Casper, a parent who has spoken against the The Giver as
a book for middle school children. “Just by having several children in
the schools we see what they are reading. They (school officials) call
this curriculum critical thinking. It has a repetitive theme of
violence and killing, euthanasia and sex.”
The Blue Springs book challenge began in the fall of 2003. That's
when Casper, parent Cerise Ivey and several other parents asked the
district to re-evaluate Lowery's book as suggested reading for
eighth-grade students. The Giver was written primarily for
middle-school-age children, published in 1993. It is included on the
American Library Association list of the one hundred most frequently
challenged books.
The book is about a twelve-year-old boy, Jonas, who lives in a
Utopian society intentionally absent of a past. People there have no
memories and make no decisions. Memories are stored in one person, the
giver, who eventually passes them on to a receiver. Jonas becomes a
receiver. Once he gets the memories he knows that people don't just go
away. They are murdered, especially the weak such as babies who cry too
much and old people. That is when Jonas chooses to leave.
The parents called the book “lewd” and “twisted” and pleaded for it to be tossed out of the district.
A communication arts committee responsible for approving reading
lists for the middle and high school grades was the first to hear the
parents' challenge. The committee voted to keep the book. Parents
appealed to a second committee of communication arts teachers, parents,
administrators and students who reconsidered the book with the group's
written objections to it.
The parents who challenged the book said they were excluded from
that meeting. The committee recommended that the school board leave The Giver on
the list. Because they were not allowed in the second meeting, Casper
and the other parents who brought the challenge in the first place said
they think the district violated open-meeting laws. Casper said the
group members have sought advice from an attorney regarding their right
to have been present when the committee reviewed objections.
Tom Rodenberg, an attorney for the district, said the district denies excluding the parents from the meeting.
Regardless of the school board's decision on The Giver,
Casper said her group would continue to challenge it and other books.
She said the Blue Springs parents have received advice from some
parents in the Blue Valley School District who developed a Web site
listing many books they find unfit for children.
“We might as well examine the whole curriculum,” Casper said. “And
we have considered starting our own Web site, too. This is not going to
just go away.”
Reported in: Kansas City Star, February 9.
Beaverton, Oregon
When Julie Herbison read a vivid description of a “Vegas-style
friction dance” in a book her sixteen-year-old son brought home from
his tenth-grade American Literature class, she was sure his teacher had
not read the book herself. She was right. Lisa Pace, an English teacher
at Southridge High School, had not read Bringing Down the House,
one of five books students were allowed to pick among for a book-group
project. Nor was Pace obligated to read the book before assigning it,
according to Principal Amy Gordon, because the book was not required
reading.
Herbison thinks that's wrong. “Teachers need to know what they're
assigning,” said Herbison, who filed a formal challenge asking the
district to ban the book. “Teachers need to have read the book.”
District officials say they agree; a teacher is expected either to
read a book used in the classroom in advance or ask a librarian to
evaluate its suitability. But it wasn't until officials investigated
Herbison's complaint that they learned some teachers and administrators
are not familiar with the district's policies for vetting supplementary
material. The School Board approves most books used in the classroom,
but teachers can independently select “supplementary material” if it is
used infrequently. That was the case in Pace's American literature
class, where students choose a book to discuss in a small group.
The policy “has been unevenly distributed and applied—and even
known about—throughout the district,” said Sarah Boly, assistant
superintendent for school improvement.
The policy is based on a narrow set of guidelines governing the use
of PG and PG-13 rated films that has not been updated since 1994. The
district has not issued any further guidance on how teachers should
select supplementary material, which could include novels, magazine
articles or movies.
District administrators are drafting a new set of standards for
supplementary material and will present their recommendations to the
superintendent and administrators in January, Boly said.
Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich, is a loose
retelling of the exploits of six students at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology who employ elaborate card-counting techniques
to win $3 million at Las Vegas blackjack tables in two years. It
contains profanity and abundant references to prostitution and
gambling. It's also No. 18 on The New York Times' paperback nonfiction
bestseller list.
Herbison's objections went beyond the book's content. “We challenge
the processes and procedures that led to the adoption of the book as a
required assignment,” she and her husband, Dan, wrote in a letter to
Gordon, the principal.
Pace did not actually pick Bringing Down the House or the
other four books. She asked students to interview adults about books
they would recommend to young adults, then present one suggested book
to the class after reviewing it for “school appropriateness.” After
listening to the presentations, the class winnowed the list of
presented books down to six.
David Herbison and five other students picked Bringing Down the House
and took it home. That's when his mother, bored and nursing a headache,
picked it up and read it straight through. “I just keep reading, and I
keep thinking, ‘What is this? What have they sent home?'“ Herbison
recalled. “And it just keeps getting worse.”
The next day she confronted Pace, who acknowledged that she had not read the book, according to Herbison.
Pace and the school's vice principals initially considered
confiscating the books from students and assigning them to other books
groups, according to a draft of a note the school later sent to
parents. That would have violated district policy, which prohibits
responding to complaints about instructional material by dropping the
material. Instead, administrators sent a note home with students in
mid-October, requesting their parents' permission to continue reading
the book. Pace also called parents to relay more details about the
book's potentially objectionable content, according to Gordon.
All six students reading Bringing Down the House received permission to finish the book, except David Herbison, who ended up reading Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Other teachers at Southridge also ask students to
complete similar assignments and generate reading lists, Gordon said.
Last year, when Pace asked students to complete this assignment she
appears to have sent notes home informing parents of their children's
selections before students began reading the books, according to Pace's
home page on the district's Web site.
It is unclear why Pace did not notify parents of the book choices
in advance this year. Boly, former principal of Southridge, said many
high school principals were unaware of policies on supplementary
material, partly because so many of them are new to their positions or
to the district.
Following Herbison's formal complaint, a committee will review Bringing Down the House, and judge the book as “a whole and not on passages taken out of context,” according to administrative regulations.
Herbison listed “increased curiosity about gambling and
pornography” and “ideas on how to smuggle (things) past security” as
possible consequences of reading the book.
And the opinion of the boy whose curiosity about card-counting
ignited this debate? Of his teacher, David Herbison said: “She makes
class interesting and we learn.”
Reported in: Portland Oregonian, December 16.
Cookeville, Tennessee
A Cookeville High School administrator said Veterans for Peace and
a Quaker group can't come back into his school with materials
considered “anti-American” and “antimilitary.” The groups planned to go
before the Putnam County School Board to claim they're being denied
privileges afforded to other organizations, including military
recruiters.
The war veterans, some who also belong to the Quaker group, were
allowed into the school during a September fair for organizations. They
set up a table with books about U.S. wars and offered photocopied
fliers and pamphlets from both organizations about the war in Iraq and
military careers and alternatives.
Quaker and veteran Hector Black said several students stopped by
the table asking questions, and a couple of teachers even thanked them
for coming. He said there wasn't any indication of a problem until
later that evening when he got a phone call from Principal Wayne Shank.
Shank told Black that some of the groups' materials may be proper
for adults, but he thought they were inappropriate for the students.
“The information was brought to the attention of administrators because
of the influence it may have had,” said Shank, who restricted future
visits by the groups. “I felt from a principal's viewpoint that the
students were being put into a position that they shouldn't,” said
Shank, who restricted future visits by the groups.
Black said Shank specified some quotes in the literature that he
objected to, including one from a 1953 speech by President Eisenhower
that said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed. Those who are cold and are not clothed . . . “
Another quote from an unknown author said, “The army that can
defeat terrorism doesn't drive Humvees, or call in airstrikes . . . It
undermines military dictatorship and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.”
County School Director Michael Martin said: “Parents found the
materials to be anti-American, antimilitary. That didn't come from us.
That came from the parents who saw the materials when their kids
brought it home.”
Shank said in a phone interview from Cookeville that he couldn't
recall everything he found offensive. He said he received a complaint
call from a parent a day after the event and made an administrative
decision to ban their “offensive materials.”
Shank said he didn't tell the groups that they couldn't come back
into the school. He required that all their materials get advance
approval, a rule he said also applies to military recruiters.
The principal also said their literature could only be shown in a
classroom setting that would allow an opportunity for a “balanced”
presentation. Military recruiters and other groups don't face that
restriction, the peace activists said.
Veteran Charlie Osburn said his group doesn't understand why
military recruiters and others like the Association of Christian
Athletes are allowed into Cookeville High School without the same
restrictions. His group aims to inform students, he said.
Reported in: Associated Press, February 2.
Loudoun County, Virginia
When two plainclothes Loudoun County sheriff's investigators showed
up on her Leesburg doorstep, Pamela Albaugh got nervous. But when they
told her why they were there, she got angry: A complaint had been filed
alleging that her eleven-year old son had made “anti-American and
violent” statements in school.
She was aware of an incident at Belmont Ridge Middle School in
which her son, Yishai Asido, was assigned to write a letter to U.S.
Marines and responded, according to his teacher, by saying, “I wish all
Americans were dead and that American soldiers should die.” Yishai and
Albaugh deny that the boy wished his countrymen dead.
Albaugh, a U.S. citizen, and her husband, an Israeli citizen who
manages a Leesburg moving company, say the investigators' visit and the
school's response were a paranoid overreaction in a charged post-9/11
environment. But law enforcement officials said the terrorist attacks
and the Columbine school shootings require them to consider whether
children who make threats might pose a danger to their classmates.
Albaugh described her son as a rambunctious student who has long
opposed armies of any kind. He refused the Veterans Day assignment and
told his teacher that the Marines “might as well die, as much as I
care.” Whatever was said, the words had been the source of anguished
conferences, phone calls and, ultimately, a day of in-school suspension.
Albaugh thought the whole thing was resolved in school until
Investigators Robert LeBlanc and Kelly Poland showed up. What followed,
she said, was two hours of polite but intense and personal questioning.
They asked how she felt about 9/11 and the military. They asked whether
she knows any foreigners who have trouble with American policy. They
mentioned a German friend who had been staying with the family and
asked whether the friend sympathized with the Taliban. They also
inquired whether she might be teaching her children “anti-American
values,” she said.
Toward the end of the conversation, Albaugh's husband, Alon Asido,
arrived home. Asido said the pair then spent another hour talking to
him, mostly about his life in Israel and his more than four years in an
elite combat unit there. Before the investigators left, one deputy said
their “concerns had been put to rest,” Albaugh said.
“It was intimidating,” she said. “I told them it's like a George
Orwell novel, that it felt like they were the thought police. If
someone would have asked me five years ago if this was something my
government would do, I would have said never.”
Loudoun County Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson confirmed that
investigators visited the house. “Whenever there is a complaint that a
child in a school is using language that is threatening or with violent
overtones, we have an obligation to look into it,” he said. “We can't
ignore something like that and have something tragic happen down the
road that we could have prevented.”
Simpson declined to comment on details of the complaint or the
kinds of questions investigators asked. “If you're looking at what [the
school] said he said, I have to think you'd see where we came up with
those questions,” he said.
A schools spokesman declined to comment, other than to release, at
Albaugh's request, a one-page letter from Yishai's file that explained
his suspension.
His parents said the boy's words were those of a confused
adolescent, whose views of the world are still being formed. They
believe that authorities were called partly because he has a
foreign-sounding name and accented English from years of living abroad.
The family lived in India, Europe and Israel before moving to the
United States in 2000. The couple have four children, with both U.S.
and Israeli citizenship, enrolled in Loudoun schools.
Albaugh said that Yishai is not violent and that the school could
have used the classroom incident as a “teachable moment,” helping him
learn to say what he was feeling in a less offensive manner. Instead,
Yishai said he has learned that it is not worth challenging authority.
“At the end of the day, you lose,” he said, adding: “All of these
freedoms and things they're supposed to uphold, they bash them.”
Georgetown law professor David Cole said Yishai's statement in
class is protected by the Constitution. “There's no indication from the
student making an anti-American statement that violence to the school
would follow,” he said. “The FBI and government officials should be
investigating real terrorists, not children who criticize the United
States.”
Reported in: Washington Post, December 15.
Fullerton, California
When high school journalist Ann Long sent a recent edition of her
school's newspaper to the printer, she hoped her profile of three gay
students would generate some discussion in the hallways. But she didn't
expect to be punished for writing the article.
According to Long and her mother, officials at Troy High School in
Fullerton told the senior that she must resign or face being fired from
her shared post as editor in chief of the Oracle.
Assistant Principal Joseph D'Amelia, who Long said delivered the
ultimatum, declined to comment, deferring questions to Patricia Howell,
deputy superintendent for the Fullerton Joint Union High School
District. Howell, who wouldn't discuss Long by name, said district and
school officials did not object to the story's content. She said Long,
eighteeen, was being punished for violating the ethical standards of
the journalism class and a state education code that prohibits asking
students about their sexuality without parental permission.
“We're not saying there is anything morally wrong with the
article,” she said. “Freedom of speech is not at issue. Confidentiality
and privacy rights are the issue.”
It is a position that has left Long defiant and legal experts
contending that the state law applies to faculty but not students.
“I don't think I've done anything that merits me stepping down,”
said Long, who vowed not to surrender her position. “Perhaps I should
have called the parents to interview them for the story, but I don't
feel like I should have been obligated to get their permission to write
it. These students chose to talk to me.”
At issue was a December 17 article that chronicled the decisions of
three students—two eighteen-year-olds and a fifteen-year-old—to reveal
their homosexuality and bisexuality to family and friends. All three
spoke to Long knowing their names would be used.
According to Long, her journalism teacher, Georgette Cerrutti,
worked closely with her on drafts of the article for more than a month,
at one point discussing with her the impact it might have on the
students' families. Long said Cerrutti never told her she needed to get
the parents' approval.
Long said she was summoned to D'Amelia's office, where he and
Cerrutti admonished her for not seeking the parents' permission. “He
told me I either had to resign and make an example of myself for
failing to do my job,” Long said of D'Amelia, “or that I would be
removed.”
In meetings with Long's parents, D'Amelia and Troy Principal Chuck
Maruca reaffirmed the school's stance, Long and her mother said.
Howell said journalism students are taught to be cautious when
writing stories that address other students' private lives. She said
Long had violated the section of the California education code that
requires written parental permission before asking students questions
about their or their parents' “personal beliefs or practices in sex,
family life, morality, and religion,” as the code states.
“Anytime a school policy or the education code is violated, there obviously has to be some consequences,” Howell said.
Howell declined to comment on whether Cerrutti had told Long of
that requirement or whether the teacher had asked to see the parents'
written permission.
Experts on the rights of student journalists said the district was
wrong to apply that part of the education code to a student. “The
school has no right to punish this student,” said lawyer Mark Goodman,
executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington,
Virginia. “A student has the right to talk about their private life,
and a student journalist has the right to report on it. Ultimately,
there are some things that are not within a school's right to control.”
Doug Mirell, a First Amendment lawyer in Los Angeles, said that
because minors legally could not waive their right to privacy in
discussing matters such as sexual orientation, journalists must get a
parent's permission. Mirell said it would be up to a parent, and not a
school, to complain about the privacy breach.
Goodman and Michael Hersher, a state Department of Education
lawyer, said they had never heard of a school trying to apply that
section of the education code to a student journalist. They cited
another section of the code that places the responsibility on faculty
advisors “to maintain professional standards of English and journalism”
in school newspapers.
Reported in: Los Angeles Times, January 26.
Lilburn, Georgia
Berkmar High School students opened the school newspaper to a blank
editorial page after the school's principal ordered the staff to yank
two opinion pieces about a new club for straight and gay teens.
Gwinnett County school officials said Principal Kendall Johnson told
the staff to remove the editorials because he felt it would disturb
students during exam time.
“Mr. Johnson was not going to allow there to be distractions from
what they are about teaching and learning,” Gwinnett Schools
spokeswoman Sloan Roach said. “The point-counterpoint was inflammatory
in nature and could be disruptive.”
The columns were slated for the December issue of the newspaper, the Liberty. The editorials debated whether a student club—the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Society—should meet on school grounds.
Liberty editor L'Anita Weiler, eighteen, said, “I had a feeling it was going to be censored.”
Weiler and student copy editor Kelly Shaul, seventeen, distributed
copies of the editorials to Berkmar students after the paper was
published. “We wanted to run a censored stamp on the page. But Mr.
Johnson censored our ‘censored' stamp, which is pointless,” Shaul said.
The newspaper also wrote a news article about the formation of the
club, which was edited by school administrators, Weiler said.
In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood School District
v. Kuhlmeier that principals were allowed to censor school
publications, but First Amendment advocates argue that students should
be able to exercise free speech.
“The point is their prediction of disruption has to be based on
reasonable facts,” said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student
Press Law Center in Arlington, Virginia. “What the censorship can't be
based on is the inclination to silence a particular viewpoint they
disagree with or think would be unpopular.”
Reported in: firstamendmentcenter.org, January 18.
Clinton, New York
The president of Hamilton College, citing “credible threats of
violence,” said February 1 that she was canceling a campus forum whose
panelists included a Colorado professor who had disparaged 9/11 victims
as “little Eichmanns.”
In a written statement, President Joan Hinde Stewart said that the
college had done its best “to protect what we hold most dear, the right
to speak, think and study freely,” but that ensuring safety at the
event scheduled for February 3 was “a higher responsibility.”
Hamilton, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, had
been inundated with negative telephone calls and e-mail regarding the
professor, Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado, who had been
invited to partici-pate in a campus discussion on dissent before,
Hamilton officials said, the college learned of an essay he had written
about the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
In that essay, Professor Churchill, whose area of expertise
involves American Indian rights, wrote that the thousands killed at the
World Trade Center had a role in American sanctions on Iraq that
“translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance,
into the starved and rotting flesh of infants.”
“If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of
visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little
Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the Twin Towers, I'd
really be interested in hearing about it,” wrote Professor Churchill,
who also described the 9/11 hijackers as “combat teams.”
In earlier statements, President Hinde had said she found Professor
Churchill's comments “personally repugnant,” but declined to cancel his
visit, saying that “we have a real test of freedom of expression here.”
But Dr. Hinde said that threats aimed at both the college and members
of the panel had forced her to cancel the discussion to protect “our
students, faculty, staff and the community in which we live.”
She did not specify how many threats the college had received, but
said information about them had been given to local police. Professor
Churchill himself has said that he received many death threats and was
planning to update and notarize his will.
On February 1, the interim chancellor of the University of Colorado
at Boulder accepted Professor Churchill's resignation as chairman of
the ethnic studies department, although he will continue to teach
there. The chancellor, Philip DiStefano, said that he had decided that
resignation was in “the best interest of the university,” although he
acknowledged that traditionally universities “are places where good and
bad ideas clash.”
In an interview with a Denver television station, Professor
Churchill said his essay, intending to explain foreign animus toward
the United States and the motives behind the 9/11 attacks, had been
misconstrued. “The overriding question that was being posed at the time
was 'Why did this happen, why did they hate us so much?' and my premise
was when you do this to other people's families and children, that is
going to be a natural response,” he said.
Among those who had protested Professor Churchill's appearance was
Gov. George E. Pataki, who told a dinner banquet that there was “a
difference between freedom of speech and inviting a bigoted terrorists
supporter.”
This was the second recent imbroglio involving a controversial
figure invited to Hamilton College. Late last year, a 1960's radical,
Susan Rosenberg, was hired as a teacher and “activist in residence” but
resigned before coming to the college after widespread protest.
Rosenberg served sixteen years in prison for possessing explosives
before President Bill Clinton pardoned her in 2000. She was also linked
by federal prosecutors to the 1981 robbery of a Brink's armored car in
Nyack, N.Y., in which a Brink's guard and two police officers were
killed.
Reported in: New York Times, February 1.
New York, New York
America's biggest publisher, the New York-based Doubleday, has
provoked fierce controversy among families of the victims of the
September 11 terror attacks by commissioning an anthology of writing by
al-Qa'eda terrorist leaders. The book will contain new translations of
polemics by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his al-Qa'eda
deputy, including material not previously seen outside the Arab world
and which pre-dates the terror campaign.
When news of the deal first broke in the American publishing press,
the company said that it had not decided how to use the expected
profits from the book. After angry protests that it stood to cash in on
the 9/11 attacks, however, Doubleday announced that all the proceeds
from the book, which has the working title Al Qaeda Reader, would be given to charity.
Suzanne Herz, a spokesman for Doubleday, said there was no question
of making payments to anyone connected with al-Qa'eda. Instead the
company is paying just over $100,000 (£53,000) for the rights to a
Washington librarian, who is translating and anthologising the two
men's virulently anti-Western tracts and tirades.
The decision to publish the book has provoked mixed reactions from
those who lost family members in the 2001 attacks carried out by bin
Laden's followers. “This can only give publicity to their terrible
views and glorify what they did,” said Tracy Larkey, a British
mother-of-three whose husband, Robin, died in the attack on the Twin
Towers. “At least they have decided to give the money to charity. It
would have been unacceptable if they hadn't.”
Jack Lynch, who lost his son Michael, a firefighter, said: “People
who promote terrorism are an evil and a cancer in our society. Anything
that promotes their agenda shouldn't be distributed in this country.”
Yet Lee Ielpi, whose son Jonathan, also a firefighter, died in the
attack, welcomed the book. “Anything the general public can read to
emphasise how severe these terrorists are in their threats to destroy
us would be beneficial,” he said. “We are becoming complacent as it is.”
For the publishers, Herz said that the book would be an “important
insight into the mind of America's greatest enemy” and a “compelling
historic document that deserves publication”.
The debate over the Al Qaeda Reader has drawn comparisons with that over Hitler's Mein Kampf.
The book is published in America by Houghton Mifflin and profits are
given to a fund which backs groups that combat Hitler's views.
Stephen Rubin, the president and publisher of the Doubleday
Broadway Publishing Group, which is owned by the German company,
Bertelsmann, told The Wall Street Journal: “We firmly believe we're doing a great service to America by publishing the innermost thoughts of our greatest enemy.”
The al-Qa'eda volume will be based largely on two books published in Arabic during the 1990s. The Battle of the Lion's Den is a collection of interviews with bin Laden about the terror network's origins, while Bitter Harvest is
al-Zawahiri's justification of jihad (holy war). The material was
discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington by Raymond Ibrahim,
who works in its Near East Studies section.
The publisher is confident that the terrorist leaders will be
unable to claim remuneration for use of their material, since their
writings are in the public domain and have been published in Arab
countries which have not signed international copyright treaties.
“You're not going to see Osama bin Laden coming out of his cave for a
check,” said Herz.
Reported in: Daily Telegraph, January 23.
Washington, D.C.
The nation's new education secretary denounced the Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) January 26 for spending public money on a
cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want
children exposed to such lifestyles. The not-yet-aired episode of Postcards From Buster
shows the title character, an animated bunny named Buster, on a trip to
Vermont—a state known for recognizing same-sex civil unions. The
episode features two lesbian couples, although the focus is on farm
life and maple sugaring.
A PBS spokesman said the nonprofit network haddecided not to
distribute the episode, called “Sugartime!,” to its 349 stations. She
said the Education Department's objections were not a factor in that
decision.
“Ultimately, our decision was based on the fact that we recognize
this is a sensitive issue, and we wanted to make sure that parents had
an opportunity to introduce this subject to their children in their own
time,” said Lea Sloan, vice president of media relations at PBS.
However, the Boston public television station that produces the
show, WGBH, did make the “Sugartime!” episode available to other
stations. WGBH also planned to air the episode on March 23, Sloan said.
PBS gets money for the Postcards from Buster series through the federal Ready-To-Learn program, one aimed at helping young children learn through television.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said the “Sugartime!”
episode did not fulfill the intent Congress had in mind for
programming. By law, she said, any funded shows must give top attention
to “research-based educational objectives, content and materials.”
“Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the
lifestyles portrayed in the episode,” Spellings wrote in a letter sent
to Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of PBS.
“Congress' and the Department's purpose in funding this programming
certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children,
particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television.”
She asked PBS to consider refunding the money it spent on the episode.
With her letter, Spellings has made criticism of the publicly
funded program's depiction of the gay lifestyle one of her first acts
as secretary. She took on the position just one day after, replacing
Rod Paige as President Bush's education chief.
In her letter, Spellings asked that her department's seal or any
statement linking the department to the show be removed. She asked PBS
to notify its member stations of the nature of show so they could
review it before airing it. And she asked for the refund “in the
interest of avoiding embroiling the Ready-To-Learn program in a
controversy that will only hurt” it. In closing, she warned: “You can
be assured that in the future the department will be more clear as to
its expectations for any future programming that it funds.”
The department has awarded nearly $99 million to PBS through the
program over the last five years in a contract that expires in
September, said department spokesman Susan Aspey. That money went to
the production of Postcards from Buster, and another animated
children's show, and to promotion of those shows in local communities,
she said. The show about Buster also gets funding from other sources.
In the show, Buster carries a digital video camera and explores
regions, activities and people of different backgrounds and religions.
On the episode in question, “The fact that there is a family structure
that is objectionable to the Department of Education is not at all the
focus of the show, nor is it addressed in the show,” said Sloan of PBS.
But she also said: “The department's concerns align very closely
with PBS' concerns, and for that reason, it was decided that PBS will
not be providing the episode.” Stations will receive a new episode, she
said.
Reported in: Associated Press, January 25.
Washington, D.C.
Al-Manar, one of the most popular television networks in the
Arabic-speaking world, has been removed from U.S. airwaves after the
State Department designated it a supporter of terrorism. State
Department officials placed the satellite television network, run by
the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, on its Terrorist Exclusion List
December 28 because of what they described as its incitement of
terrorist activity. The designation means foreign nationals who work
for the network or provide it any support can be barred from the United
States, officials said.
“It's not a question of freedom of speech,” State Department
spokesman Richard A. Boucher said. “It's a question of incitement of
violence. We don't see why, here or anywhere else, a terrorist
organization should be allowed to spread its hatred and incitement
through the television airwaves.”
Al-Manar is protesting the designation, saying on its Web site that
banning it was an attempt “to terrorize and silence thoughts that are
not in line with U.S. and Israeli policies.”
The U.S. action had the effect of banning al-Manar in the United
States, where its programming had been beamed via GlobeCast, a company
that sells access to foreign television programs by satellite. “As of
Friday last week, that channel is no longer on the satellite,”
GlobeCast spokesman Robert Marking said.
Some Arabic-speaking Americans expressed frustration with the State Department's action. Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News,
a newspaper in Dearborn, Michigan, said al-Manar is popular in this
country in part because of its strong support for “resistance against
Israeli occupation.”
“I disagree with the State Department that it incites violence,” he
said. “By that standard, they should shut Fox News for inciting
violence against Muslims.”
Earlier in December, French officials prohibited the network from
broadcasting in France, citing what it called al-Manar's anti-Semitic
content and appeals to violence. French officials cited al-Manar
programs reporting that Jews spread AIDS around the world and that they
seek children's blood to bake into Passover matzoh.
A radical Lebanese political party that was formed in 1982 to
represent Shiite Muslims, Hezbollah has been designated a terrorist
organization by the U.S. government for years. Its military wing,
funded by Iran and dedicated to the destruction of Israel, is widely
admired in the Arab world for forcing Israel from southern Lebanon in
2000. Hezbollah also funds schools and hospitals in Lebanon.
Al-Manar airs a wide array of programming, including children's
shows and soccer games. It heavily covers events involving the
Palestinians, and it shows militants setting off explosives and
shooting at Israelis and American troops, often to musical
accompaniment. “Al-Manar often juxtaposes sacred Islamic text with
images of ‘martyrdom' to incite its viewers to support and even carry
out acts of terror,” according to a recent report by the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank. “Potential
bombers are implored to focus their attention on the afterlife and on
Judgment Day ‘instead of getting preoccupied with our lives on earth.'“
Reported in: Washington Post, December 29.
Birmingham, England
In the few days since a drama company in the Midlands canceled the
run of a contentious play in the face of violent religious protests,
British theater has been grappling with a range of uncomfortable and
unusual questions about censorship, freedom and faith. The
cancellation, by the Birmingham Repertory Theater, challenged Britain's
four hundred thousand Sikhs to contemplate the distinctions within
their ranks as values change, separating a conservative old guard of
immigrants from a newer generation born and reared in Britain. And the
episode posed a near-unanswerable question for liberal-minded British
theatergoers: what counts more, their commitment to free speech or
their commitment to minority rights? Indeed, what kind of a society
permits a mob to silence artistic expression in the first place?
“I think it's one of the blackest days for the arts in this country
that I have ever experienced,” said Neal Foster, the manager of another
theater, the Birmingham Stage Company. “Violence is not part of the
process we are used to. In the short term the thugs have won, and this
has never happened before in the artistic community.”
The furor centers on a play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, the
British-born daughter of Sikh immigrants. Her latest work, “Behzti”
(“Dishonor”), used a Sikh temple as the setting for a harrowing scene
in which a young woman is beaten by other women, including her own
mother, after being raped by a man who claims to have had a homosexual
relationship with her father.
As the play was being performed on December 18, hundreds of Sikh
protesters attacked the building, throwing bricks, smashing windows and
fighting with police. Citing the threat of further disruptions, the
theater canceled the run, which started December 9, but that was only
the beginning of a much broader drama.
In the midst of this impassioned debate, Bhatti went into hiding,
fearing for her life after death threats. The situation evoked
comparisons with the fatwa by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 that
sent the writer Salman Rushdie into hiding following the publication of
his Satanic Verses, a novel the Iranian authorities regarded as insulting to Islam.
“This is the Sikhs' Rushdie affair,” said Gurharpal Singh, a
professor of interreligious studies at the University of Birmingham.
“There are overtones of religious censorship and the clash between
community norms and liberal society.”
The soul-searching has become even more tangled because the staging
of “Behzti” intersects with another discussion in Britain over a new
law that would make incitement to religious hatred a crime, in effect
extending earlier legislation that outlawed incitement to racial hatred.
In some ways it is all the more perplexing that the incident should
have taken place in Birmingham, England's second city, which has
managed to achieve an ethnic balance with a large minority of people
from an Asian background, most of them Muslims. Not only is Bhatti, the
playwright, a Sikh, but so were several members of the cast.
The play's setting infuriated Sikh protesters, who argued that acts
like rape and brutality could never happen in the sanctity of a temple.
Sikh leaders labeled the drama an insult to their faith, which has some
sixteen million adherents. The religion, founded in the fifteenth
century, is rooted in the Punjab region of India and has spread in a
million-strong diaspora to Britain, Canada, the United States and other
countries.
The play itself, with themes like arranged marriage and the clash
of tradition with modernity, drew mixed reviews. It was advertised as a
black comedy, but the Birmingham Evening Mail said that “what begins as a sharp and black look at a modern family dilemma sinks beneath its own weight.” By contrast, the Birmingham Post called the play—Bhatti's second after a 2001 work, “Behsharam” (“Shameless”)—gripping and essential.”
Whatever the faults and merits, though, they were lost in a debate
that made headlines in British newspapers and on radio and television
shows, and raised profound concerns about the consequences of, as some
saw it, caving in to violence.
In the future, “theaters will not want to take the risk” of staging
provocative works, said Foster of the Birmingham Stage Company. “It
doesn't just affect theater. What about controversial books, art
galleries, paintings?”
But many Sikh representatives argue that the issues have been
misunderstood. Harmander Singh, a spokesman for the advocacy group
Sikhs in England, said concerns about the setting of the play had gone
unheeded for days before the violent protests. Sikh representatives had
suggested that the play would be far less offensive if the setting were
changed from a temple to a community center, a proposal the theater
rejected.
“Rape and other things happen everywhere,” Singh said in a telephone interview. “We know that is a reality.”
The fact that Bhatti's play took place in a temple was at the
center of Sikh objections. “It's nothing to do with the contents; it's
the context,” he said. “We are not against freedom of speech, but
there's no right to offend.”
Like other immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, Sikhs began
arriving in Britain in the 1950's and 60's and are widely depicted as
having prospered. In recent years, Sikh leaders have steered clear of
the political activism associated with campaigns in the 1960's for the
right to wear a turban and in the 1980's in support of Sikh separatism.
And other Sikhs have registered far less hostile views about the play.
“Most Sikhs don't wear a turban,” Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal, a
thirty-year-old Sikh writer whose father immigrated to London in 1959,
said. “They are very laid-back about their religion. There's a
perception that if you are not white, you take your religion a lot more
seriously than anyone else. That's not true.”
Professor Singh at the University of Birmingham also spoke of a
lack of dialogue between older Sikh leaders and younger generations.
“Sikhs who have been born here take the idea of freedom of expression
quite seriously,” he said.
Indeed, Bhatti, thirty-five, said in a foreword to her play that
“sometimes I feel imprisoned by the mythology of the Sikh diaspora,
with its stress on Sikh success, affluence, hard work and aspiration.”
Bhatti has not appeared in public since the cancellation of her play
and has declined requests for interviews. But in the foreword she
wrote: “I believe that drama should be provocative and relevant. I
wrote ‘Behzti' because I passionately oppose injustice and hypocrisy.”
Reported in: New York Times, December 25.
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