Score another win for student activists in Chicago Public Schools, who last week helped to avert the dismissal of their beloved librarian due to budget cuts. Sara Sayigh, librarian at the South Side’s DuSable Campus, had been slated to lose…
Author: Maren Williams
Charlie Hebdo Editor’s Posthumous Free Expression Manifesto Out Next Month
Nearly a year after the attack on the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo which killed 12 people including five cartoonists, a manifesto on freedom of expression that editor Stéphane Charbonnier (widely known as Charb) completed shortly before his death will…
CBLDF Board Member Reginald Hudlin Receives Critics Association’s Excellence Award
CBLDF board member and entertainment industry trailblazer Reginald Hudlin will be the first-ever recipient of the African-American Film Critics Association’s “Salute to Excellence Award” at the group’s upcoming awards ceremony in February. Hudlin is an innovative force in modern Black…
Michigan Parents Worry Picture Book Will Indoctrinate Students to Islam
Some parents in Eau Claire, Michigan, are accusing the local school district of preaching Islam to students via the picture book Nasreen’s Secret School, which was also challenged earlier this year in Florida. The increased focus on the book is…
Palestinian Authority Issues Warrant for Cartoonist’s Arrest
Palestinian cartoonist Baha Yassin was caught up in complex internal politics this week, as the Palestinian Authority issued a warrant for his arrest due to his cartoons critical of the Fatah party. Yassin lives outside of Palestinian Authority jurisdiction, but…
CBLDF Signs on to Defend The Family Book in Etiwanda, CA
CBLDF has joined the Kids’ Right to Read Project and other freedom to read advocates to defend Todd Parr’s The Family Book in the Etiwanda, California school district. The parents of one formerly enrolled student want the book banned from…
Wasilla Library Challenge Highlights Importance of Age-Appropriate Shelving
Back in September, a 10-year-old boy in Wasilla, Alaska pulled a young adult book called This Book is Gay off a shelf in the juvenile nonfiction section of the local public library. His mother, believing the book “too sexually explicit…
WI School Board Member Wants Muppet Book Out of Curriculum
A parent and school board member in Marshfield, WI wants a United Nations-published picture book featuring Kermit the Frog removed from the district’s new kindergarten curriculum, claiming that the book about global poverty and conflict contains too much “negative, dark,…
CBLDF Joins Coalition Defending The Namesake in ID School District
CBLDF has joined the Kids’ Right to Read Project and other freedom to read advocates to defend Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake in the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho school district. CBLDF joins coalition efforts like these to protect the freedom to read…
New Project Aims to Map Social Media Censorship
Since our cultural communications have moved increasingly online, often to spaces controlled by large corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, free-speech advocates have watched in dismay as those entities have inconsistently enforced content policies. Unlike U.S. government entities such…