The case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District is special for several reasons. First, Tinker is a landmark case that defines the constitutional rights of students in public schools. But more importantly, Tinker shows that people can make…
Category: Education
CBLDF Signs On To Protect Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund joins nine other free speech organizations who signed a letter to Northville School District in Michigan urging them to keep the definitive edition of Anne Frank’s A Diary of a Young Girl in middle school…
Defending the Freedom to Read by Reporting Challenges
Last week, the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom offered “Defend the Freedom to Read: Reporting Challenges,” a free webinar presented by OIF Assistant Director Angela Maycock. The webinar is now available online. ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom tracks…
Obscenity Case Files: United States v. One Book Called “Ulysses”
James Augusta Aloysius Joyce is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the early 20th century. His book Ulysses has been called one of the most challenging and rewarding novels ever written and is considered to be…
A Librarian Considers Persepolis
Last month a Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) directive seemed to require that copies of Marjane Satrapi’s memoir Persepolis be removed from classrooms and school libraries. A later memo clarified that the book was allowed to remain in libraries; the concerns…
Captain Underpants Leads ALA’s Top Banned or Challenged Books of 2012
National Library Week is here, and that means it’s time for the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom to release its annual list of the books most frequently banned and/or challenged in public libraries and schools in the previous…
CBLDF Executive Director Helps Keep Toronto Reading
Join CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 16, at the North York Central Library in Toronto (5120 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario M2N 5N9) for Keep Toronto Reading: Graphically Speaking — Dirty Comics, a spirited discussion…
Obscenity Case Files: “I know it when I see it”
In the last edition of the Obscenity Case Files series, we discussed the Pope v. Illinois decision and how it impacted the Miller Test for identifying obscene material, which is not protected by the First Amendment. In this edition, we’ll take…
CBLDF Raises New Defense of Persepolis
Chicago Public Schools may think their letter regarding the attempted ban of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis provides an adequate defense for their actions, but today’s letter from the Kids Right to Read Project unquestionably eviscerates CPS’s argument. CBLDF is a sponsor…
Marjane Satrapi Wants to Know What CPS Fears About Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi wrote Persepolis not just to share her personal experiences growing up in Iran but also to make human the people of a country that has been otherwise vilified around the globe. Satrapi recently spoke with Khury Petersen-Smith with…