Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts

Monday, August 4, 2025

Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year; Iowa Capital Dispatch, July 23, 2025

 , Iowa Capital Dispatch ; Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year

"State lawmakers across the country filed more bills to restrict or protect libraries and readers in the first half of this year than last year, a new report found.

The split fell largely along geographic lines, according to the report from EveryLibrary, a group that advocates against book bans and censorship...

The geographic split among these policies is stark.

In Southern and Plains states, new laws increasingly criminalize certain actions of librarians, restrict access to materials about gender and race, and transfer decision-making power to politically appointed boards or parent-led councils.

Texas alone passed a trio of sweeping laws stripping educators of certain legal protections when providing potentially obscene materials; banning public funding for instructional materials containing obscene content; and giving parents more authority over student reading choices and new library additions.

In contrast, several Northeastern states have passed legislation protections for libraries and librarians and anti-censorship laws.

New JerseyDelawareRhode Island and Connecticut have each enacted “freedom to read” or other laws that codify protections against ideological censorship in libraries."

‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has; The New York Times, July 27, 2025

Charlie English , The New York Times; ‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has


[Kip Currier: It's incredibly heartening -- and disheartening at the same time -- to read about post-WWII "CIA Book Program" efforts to provide Soviet-propagandized citizens with access to books, ideas, and information (e.g. George Orwell's "1984"), but then reflect on book banning efforts in American libraries and censorship and erasure of information in museums like the Smithsonian right now.]


[Excerpt]

"There are myriad reasons the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989. The economic stagnation of the East and the war in Afghanistan are two of the most commonly cited. But literature also played its part, thanks to a long-running U.S. operation conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency that covertly moved millions of books through the Iron Curtain in a bid to undermine Communist Party censorship.

While it is hard to quantify the program’s effect in absolute terms, its history offers valuable lessons for today, not least since some of the very same titles and authors the C.I.A. sent East during the Cold War — including “1984”— are now deemed objectionable by a network of conservative groups across the United States.

First published in English in 1949, Orwell’s novel describes the dystopian world of Oceania, a totalitarian state where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works in a huge government department called the Ministry of Truth. The ministry is ironically named: Its role is not to safeguard the truth but to destroy it, to edit history to fit the present needs of the party and its leader, Big Brother, since, as the slogan runs, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

In the real Soviet system, every country had its equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, modeled on the Moscow template. In Poland, the largest Eastern European nation outside the Soviet Union, this censorship and propaganda apparatus was called the Main Office for the Control of Presentations and Public Performances, and its headquarters occupied most of a city block in downtown Warsaw.

From art to advertising, television to theater, the Main Office reached into all aspects of Polish life. It had employees in every TV and radio station, every film studio and every publishing house. Every typewriter in Poland had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted, and a permit was needed even to buy a ream of paper. Books that did not conform to the censor’s rules were pulped.

The result was intellectual stultification, what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz called a logocracy, a society where words and language were manipulated to fit the propaganda needs of the regime...

Troublesome people, inconvenient facts and awkward areas of journalistic inquiry were removed from public life...

Orwell was made a “nonperson” in the Soviet Union, after the publication of his satire of the Russian Revolution, “Animal Farm,” in 1945. It was dangerous even to mention the author’s name in print there, and when “1984” was published it was banned in the Eastern Bloc in all languages. But when copies of the novel did slip through the Iron Curtain, they had enormous power. The book was “difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess,” Milosz wrote, but Orwell — who had never visited Eastern Europe — fascinated people there because of “his insight into details they know well.”

What some Eastern European readers of contraband copies of “1984” suspected, but very few knew for sure, was that these and millions of other uncensored texts were not reaching them entirely by chance, but were part of a decades-long U.S. intelligence operation called the “C.I.A. book program,” based for much of its existence in the nondescript office building at 475 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan. There, a small team of C.I.A. employees organized the infiltration of 10 million books and periodicals into the Eastern Bloc, sending literature by every imaginable means: in trucks fitted with secret compartments, on yachts that traversed the stormy Baltic, in the mail, or slipped into the luggage of countless travelers from Eastern Europe who dropped in at C.I.A. distribution hubs in the West."

Friday, August 1, 2025

What Happened When Their Art Was Banned; The New York Times, July 31, 2025

Kate GuadagninoNick Haramis and 

, The New York Times ; What Happened When Their Art Was Banned

"Of the 26 executive orders President Donald Trump signed on the first day of his second term, one was billed as “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship,” barring the government from “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” In his address to Congress a few weeks later, Trump reiterated this point: “I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back.”

Free speech has long been, as NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik put it, “an article of faith” for conservative politicians and especially, recently, for the MAGA right, which has argued that their views have been suppressed by left-leaning social media platforms and misconstrued in the mainstream press. (Some on the left have expressed similar concerns about their views.) Yet what’s transpired since late January wouldn’t meet a free speech absolutist’s definition of unfettered discourse. Federal mandates targeting diversity or racial and gender equality have resulted in bans or attempted bans on words, ideas, books and people. Employees at NASA and other agencies were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures. The Department of Defense briefly excised a tribute to Jackie Robinson’s army service from the Pentagon website and instructed West Point to adjust its curriculum, in an attempt to purge U.S. military institutions of “divisive concepts and gender ideology.” In March, a Turkish grad student in Massachusetts was taken off the street by plainclothes officers in masks and held without charges for weeks in a Louisiana immigration detention center, seemingly for the crime of having co-authored an opinion essay in the Tufts University student newspaper critical of the school’s response to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

American artists have long seen their creative freedom attacked by governments of all political persuasions. They’ve also been the ones to speak out when others are too frightened to do so. We spoke with several seasoned artists in various fields about their own experience with having been censored. In some cases, that censorship, decades old, feels like a relic of another political moment, of other culture wars, even as it resonates with what’s happening now: same wars, new battles. It almost always affected careers and artists’ tolerance for risk — but not always negatively. For censorship can also be a rallying cry, a reminder of why artists make art in the first place. — M.H. Miller"

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Librarians on the frontline; MV Times, July 31, 2025

Abby Remer, MV Times; Librarians on the frontline

"Kim A. Snyder’s “The Librarians,” screening at the Grange Hall on August 1, is part of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival’s 25th anniversary Summer Celebration Series.

The powerful, deeply chilling documentary exposes the complexities surrounding the rising tide of book bans in libraries over the past five years, and the courageous heroes who battle against them. 

Snyder, an Oscar-nominated and Peabody-winning director, opens the documentary with Ray Bradbury’s unsettling words from “Fahrenheit 451”: “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a specific pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.”

She goes on to weave together tense school board meetings with intimate interviews of librarians on the frontlines who have been fired, harassed, and stalked as they defend books about race and LGBTQ topics. Snyder enhances current real-life events with clips from old movies that rail against librarians and endorse book-burning, reflecting how scarily close reality has come to art. 

The first voice we hear is that of a distressed librarian who is backlit to remain anonymous. “I never imagined that what’s happening now could ever happen. It didn’t dawn on us that we’d come under attack. We never imagined we’d be at the forefront … We’re stewards of the space, of the resources. We’re stewards for the people … Now we’ve moved into the vanguard.”

Throughout the film, we meet librarians in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida as they face fierce opponents — including politicians, the right-wing organization Moms for Liberty, and conservative school boards — while defending access to books that reflect students’ lives. Although their passion is evident, it is even more powerful to watch clips of students testifying or sharing informal moments about their experiences, as they are the ones harmed by the removal of books that speak to their truth. One teenage student at a school board meeting stands at a podium, confronting the members: “The job of the superintendent and school board is not only to protect students in this district, but to make them feel like they have a place in this community. I have got to tell you, from what I’m seeing so far, you are failing at your job … Stop the censorship in our district. Wake up to the reality that we are all different, and we should embrace each other with love and not blatant hate.”...

At the film’s end, the anonymous librarian comes forth on camera, leaving us with her words, “I can’t stay in the shadows anymore … I won’t be censored, just like we can’t let them keep censoring the stories in our books. What I do know is that our story is still being written. But now it’s everyone’s story.”"

ALI VELSHI BANNED BOOK CLUB WITH THE MOST BANNED AUTHOR IN THE COUNTRY; The Philadelphia Citizen, July 28, 2025

 ALI VELSHI, The Philadelphia Citizen; ALI VELSHI BANNED BOOK CLUB WITH THE MOST BANNED AUTHOR IN THE COUNTRY

"While book bans have fallen out of the news cycle, the assault on information and the freedom to read continues to be deployed against our libraries, schools, and the general public. Ali Velshi points out that since January 2025, 133 bills have been introduced in 33 states that would negatively affect libraries, librarians, and access to literature. 

This legislation seeks to cut funding, restrict literary content, and even criminalize school librarians, all with the ultimate goal of censorship.

Fortunately, particularly in red states, citizens are standing up for their rights and successfully fighting these efforts. Coalitions of libraries, publishers, families, nonprofits, and other activists are organizing, protesting, testifying, putting pressure on elected officials, and filing lawsuits.

Velshi Banned Book Club’s very first member, George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren’t Blue and Flamboyants, returned to discuss state and school district book bans, legislation, and the lawsuits challenging them. “The lawsuits are helping in a myriad of ways,” says Johnson. “You have to go through the discovery process, that’s when you really start to realize what the true motives are.”"

Thursday, July 10, 2025

WaPo Columnist Flames Jeff Bezos After Quitting in Protest; The Daily Beast, July 10, 2025

 , The Daily Beast; WaPo Columnist Flames Jeff Bezos After Quitting in Protest

"Davidson said in the Facebook post the spiked piece centered on what he believed was a hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term, “his widespread, ominous attack on thought, belief and speech,” and referenced federal officials’ comments and Trump’s own executive orders. 

But the Post spiked the column, according to Davidson. He said he tried to write two more pieces to test his resilience under the new policy, but that he bristled when editors objected to his use of “well-deserved” when describing a potential pay raise for federal employees...

“Bezos’s policies and activities have projected the image of a Donald Trump supplicant. The result: fleeing journalists, plummeting morale and disappearing subscriptions,” Davidson wrote.

“Nonetheless, Post coverage of Trump remains strong,” he added. “Yet the policy against opinion in News section columns means less critical scrutiny of Trump—a result coinciding with Bezos’ unseemly and well-documented coziness with the president.”

Monday, July 7, 2025

‘The American system is being destroyed’: academics on leaving US for ‘scientific asylum’ in France; The Guardian, July 5, 2025

, The Guardian ; ‘The American system is being destroyed’: academics on leaving US for ‘scientific asylum’ in France

"Months into Trump’s second presidency, politics is increasingly blurring into academia as the government works to root out anything it deems as “wokeism” from the post-secondary world.

“There’s a lot of censorship now, it’s crazy,” said Carol Lee, an evolutionary biologist, pointing to the list of terms now seen as off-limits in research grant applications. “There are a lot of words that we’re not allowed to use. We’re not allowed to use the words diversity, women, LGBTQ.”"

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Progressive parents in Oklahoma offer blueprint to mess with MAGA censorship; Salon, July 2, 2025

AMANDA MARCOTTE , Salon; Progressive parents in Oklahoma offer blueprint to mess with MAGA censorship

"Alito, who is as intellectually dishonest as he is self-pitying, tried to pretend the decision was a “compromise.” He repeatedly misrepresented the content of the books with hysterical language. As legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern explained at Slate, Alito “reframes these utterly innocent children’s books as insidious propaganda designed to brainwash children.” The goal here is not only to reinscribe blatant homophobia into the law, but also to minimize the impact of the decision by implying it only impacts “gay” books. But it’s far broader than that, as Vox legal journalist Ian Millhiser notes. The ruling empowers “parents who object to any form of classroom instruction on religious grounds” to demand opt-out rights — or the school to censor the material entirely. Stern continues:

The problem with this request is that schools cannot possibly know, in advance, which religious views are held by which parents, and which books or lessons those parents might find objectionable. In the past, parents have sued school districts objecting, on religious grounds, to lessons that touch on topics as diverse as divorce, interfaith couples and “immodest dress.” They’ve objected to books which expose readers to evolution, pacifism, magic, women achieving things outside of the home and “false views of death.”"

2012 Video of Bill Moyers on the Freedom to Read and the "Bane of Banning Books"; Ethics, Info, Tech: Contested Voices, Values, Spaces, July 3, 2025

Kip Currier; 2012 Video of Bill Moyers on the Freedom to Read and the "Bane of Banning Books"

Nobody writes more illuminating "I-didn't-know-THAT-about-that-person" obituaries than the New York Times. (I didn't know, for example, that Moyers was an ordained Baptist minister.) And, true to form, the Times has an excellent obituary detailing the service-focused life of Bill Moyers, who passed away on June 26, 2025 at the age of 91. 

The moment I learned of his death, my mind went to a 3-minute video clip of Moyers that I've continued to use in a graduate ethics course lecture I give on Intellectual Freedom and Censorship. The clip is from 2012 but the vital importance of libraries and the freedom to read that Moyers extolls is as timely and essential as ever, given the explosion of book bans and censorship besetting the U.S. right now.

Below is a description of the video clip and this is the video link:

"The Bane of Banned Books

September 25, 2012

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the American Library Association’s “Banned Books Week,” Bill talks about the impact libraries have had on his youth, his dismay over book challenges in modern times, and why censorship is the biggest enemy of truth."

https://billmoyers.com/content/the-bane-of-banned-books/

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

KY library book challenges rose 1,000% in 2024. That’s not a typo. What happened?; Lexington Herald Leader, June 30, 2025

John Cheves , Lexington Herald Leader; KY library book challenges rose 1,000% in 2024. That’s not a typo. What happened?

"Challenges to Kentucky public library books soared by 1,061% last year, rising from 26 incidents in 2023 to 302 incidents in 2024, according to a recently released state report. That eye-popping number is buried in small type at the bottom of page six of the annual Statistical Report of Kentucky Public Libraries, published in April by the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives."

DeWine vetoes library material restriction in Ohio budget; WFMJ, July 1, 2025

 

WFMJ; DeWine vetoes library material restriction in Ohio budget

"Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Monday vetoed a controversial provision in the state's new budget that would have imposed restrictions on public libraries regarding the placement of materials related to sexual orientation or gender identity.

The veto came as DeWine signed the state budget bill. In his statement, the Republican governor expressed concerns about what he described as the "vague restrictions" proposed for libraries.

"No child should have access to inappropriate materials or to materials that their parents or guardians deem inappropriate," DeWine said. "In Ohio, we have strong laws on obscenity and material harmful to juveniles, and the DeWine-Tressel Administration expects those laws to be enforced. Therefore, a veto of this item is in the public interest."

The provision, which had drawn strong opposition from library systems across the state, including the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County, would have required libraries to segregate such materials so they were not visible to patrons under 18.

Library advocates, including the Ohio Library Council (OLC), argued that the language was "overly vague and broad" and "ultimately unworkable." Aimee Fifarek, CEO and director of the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County, previously warned that complying with the mandate could force libraries to "close down" to review and re-code materials, potentially leading to "unconstitutional censorship."

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County raises concerns regarding potential censorship provisions; WFMJ, June 25, 2025

Zach Mosca , 21WFMJ; Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County raises concerns regarding potential censorship provisions

"The Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County (PLYMC) along with the Ohio Library Commission (OLC) are sounding the alarm over provisions in the Ohio State Budget that a representative for the library says will not only affect the library's funding, but the content guests have access to.

21 News has already highlighted concerns regarding potential budget cuts, which could put certain library programs at risk. Now, the library is raising the alarm about language in the budget that could restrict access to certain material for guests under 18.

According to the OLC, who represents Ohio's 251 public library systems including PLYMC, a provision in Ohio's budget proposal would require public libraries to segregate material related to sexual orientation or gender identity or expression so they are not visible to guests under 18.

OLC Executive Director Michelle Francis says this language is overly vague and broad and "ultimately unworkable."

"It opens the door to unconstitutional censorship and undermines the core mission of libraries - to provide free and open access to information," Francis said."

Sunday, June 22, 2025

‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage; Government Executive, June 18, 2025

 Eric Katz, Government Executive; ‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage

The administration asked for help erasing language on park displays that failed to emphasize American grandeur, but visitors have not identified any examples.


[Kip Currier: Trump 2.0's Interior Department initiative inviting National Park visitors to "snitch" on anything they see at a national park that they think presents America in "negative" or "inappropriate" ways is an affront to the complexities of history.

It's also an affront to us: as free-thinking individuals with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

There are many aspects of America and our history that are exceptional, uplifting, and inspiring. There are also aspects of America and our history that are not. Recognizing that duality does not diminish America or us. It actually strengthens us. It acknowledges that we are imperfect but are always striving to be better and do better.

Moreover, we can handle the grey complexity of parts of our history. We don't need government to sanitize and erase the parts of our history that are messy or which don't depict us at our best or listening to our better angels.

This Government Executive article gives me hope. Hope that more Americans will continue to share their voices and say that we can handle the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of our history. And hope that our government will leave their "HANDS OFF" of our collective history: if more people are willing to speak up.]


[Excerpt]

"The Trump administration recently began posting signs on federal parks and historic sites asking for help from visitors in identifying language that negatively discussed America’s past or present and launched a process for federal agencies to remove, cover or replace flagged materials. 

In the responses submitted by visitors to National Park Service sites, however, which were obtained by Government Executive, no single submission pointed to any such examples. Instead, in the nearly 200 submissions NPS received in the first days since the solicitations were posted, visitors implored the administration not to erase U.S. history and praised agency staff for improving their experiences.  

The new request at NPS and other Interior Department sites followed an executive order from President Trump dubbed “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that called for federal lands to remove information that could “improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.” That in turn led to an order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that department staff solicit public feedback to flag “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” The reviews should include exhibits, brochures, films, waysides and signs, the secretary said. 

In instructions to staff also obtained by Government Executive, NPS employees were told to review feedback from visitors weekly but not yet remove any materials. For each comment, staff can either mark it as received but not requiring action, requiring action but not related to the signage issue or flagged for review by NPS leadership in Washington. Parks will receive follow up information in August. 

In the meantime, NPS said, the agency’s Harpers Ferry Center is currently “developing standard protocols and templates to assist with expedited removal, covering, or temporary replacement of any media that does not comply with” Burgum's order. It added a “long-term plan for permanent replacement is also under development for affected media.” 

So far, NPS is not getting the help it was hoping for from those scanning the QR codes now posted around park sites soliciting assistance in identifying language in violation of Trump and Burgum’s orders. Instead, visitors accused the Trump administration of seeking to erase the nation’s history.

“There shouldn't be signs about history that whitewash and erase the centuries of discrimination against the people who have cared for this land for generations,” a visitor to Indian Dunes National Park said.

A visitor to Independence Hall in Philadelphia called the new signs “censorship dressed up as customer service.” 

“What upset me the most about the museum—more than anything in the actual exhibits—were the signs telling people to report anything they thought was negative about Americans,” the visitor said. “That isn't just frustrating, it's outrageous. It felt like an open invitation to police and attack historians for simply doing their jobs: telling the truth.” 

Several visitors to the Stonewall National Monument in New York lamented changes there the park’s website that removed mention of transgender individuals in the Stonewall Uprising. 

“Put them back,” the visitor said. “Honor them. There would be no Stonewall without trans people.”

A visitor at Yellowstone National Park said the information presented there should challenge people. 

“The executive order to asking for feedback is ****,” the message read. “Parks already do an amazing job telling stories that contain hard truths and everyone is entitled to the truth to make better decisions in our lives. So what if people feel bad?” 

Without factual information, the person added, “everything is just a pretty facade with no real substance.”

At Manzanar National Historical Site, one of the internment camps that held Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans during World War II, a visitor said the site existed to present information about the costly errors in U.S. history. 

“The entire purpose of parks like this one is to learn from the mistakes of the past so we can avoid repeating them,” the visitor said. “Please do not water down the reality of the experience for future visitors.”

A visitor at the Natchez National Historical Park had a similar takeaway. 

“Slavery was a dark time in our history and we need to come to terms with that,” the individual said, “not gloss it over and romanticize the Antebellum South.” 

Only one visitor—at Petersburg National Battlefield, a Civil War site—noted they read signs that “didn’t sit right,” though the individual did not specify any materials that needed changing. Instead, the person requested a “second look” to potentially identify “more balance.” A Grand Canyon National Park visitor said the site should change its signs, but added “signed, Elon,” suggesting the comment was left in jest. 

Many of the comments asked NPS to include more information that highlighted the U.S. government’s discriminatory practices toward Native Americans. A bevy of visitors also asked for increased staffing and complimented the steps existing employees took to improve their experiences. 

Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, called the directive requiring park staff to post the new signs with accompanying QR codes “an outrage” that shows the “deep contempt for their work to preserve and tell American stories.”   

“If our country erases the darker chapters of our history, we will never learn from our mistakes,” Pierno said. “These signs must come down immediately.”

An Interior Department spokesperson said in response to a request for comment that leaks “will not be tolerated.”

“It is a true shame that employees are spending their time leaking to the media instead of doing work for the American people, the spokesperson said. “The same American people who fund their paychecks.”

Trump, in his executive order, said federal lands should display materials that amplify American greatness. 

ark materials should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape,” Trump said. 

The Independence Hall visitor suggested that line of thinking would not effect the desired result. 

“Putting up signs like that doesn't protect anyone, [it] just tells visitors that the truth is a problem,” the visitor said. “And I can't think of anything more offensive than that.”"

Pierce County, GA library manager fired following book display including book about trans boy; FirstCoastNews, June 20, 2025

 Riley Phillips, FirstCoastNews; Pierce County, GA library manager fired following book display including book about trans boy

"A longtime employee of the library in Pierce County, Georgia has been fired after a controversial book display including a book about a transgender boy.

Lavonnia Moore was the library manager at the Pierce County Library. Her sister, Alicia Moore, spoke with First Coast News Friday. She said Lavonnia’s dreams were shattered Wednesday when she was fired from her position because of a book in a summer reading display...

Alicia said Lavonnia had been with the library system for 15 years and worked her way up from part-time clerk to library manager.


She explained the book that led to her firing is called When Aiden Became a Brother, a story of a transgender boy preparing for the birth of a new sibling.


The book drew sharp criticism from a community group called Alliance for Faith and Family, the same group that fought for the removal of a mural in the Waycross-Ware County Public Library. The group posted on social media urging people to reach out to the library system and county commissioners...


The book’s author Kyle Lukoff also weighed in. He told First Coast News he received a message about the librarian. He said "the story itself says everything I want it to, which is that trans people are a blessing," and encouraged people to read the book."

Saturday, June 21, 2025

Bill Clinton says he wondered if Trump administration might try to ban his latest book; The Hill, June 18, 2025

 JUDY KURTZ , The Hill; Bill Clinton says he wondered if Trump administration might try to ban his latest book

"Maya Angelou, who read the inaugural poem at my first inauguration — wrote it, and read it and was a great human being — the first thing the White House did was to ban her book, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,'” Clinton recalled.

Angelou’s 1969 autobiography was reportedly one of nearly 400 books that was pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy library in April as part of an effort to remove titles containing diversity, equity and inclusion content. 

Calling it a “magnificent book,” Clinton reflected on Angelou’s personal story about a child who “loses the ability to speak for a couple of years because she was abused, and then she blooms.”

“I couldn’t figure out why that was a problem,” Clinton said.

“I don’t like book banning,” the 42nd president added.

“I wasn’t ever for banning books that were full of things they said about me that weren’t true,” Clinton said.

“It never occurred to me that I should stop you from reading them.”"

Unbound Pages: Authors Against Book Bans fights for the freedom to read; WGBH, June 20, 2025

Andrea Asuaje, WGBH; Unbound Pages: Authors Against Book Bans fights for the freedom to read

"Thousands of books are facing scrutiny throughout the country as the book-banning movement continues to gain support, from Florida, to Wisconsin and even New Hampshire. Now, hundreds of authors are using their voices off the page to spread awareness about the effect book bans have on democracy and free speech.

The organization Authors Against Book Bans (AABB), which was formed in 2024, is focused on the freedom to read and composed of authors from all genres who write for readers of all ages. Many of the members have had their work challenged or banned, like AABB board member, Adib Khorram, author of several books including the often-challenged or banned “Darius The Great Is Not Okay.” The book and its sequel, “Darius The Great Deserves Better,” have come under fire for addressing race, sexuality and, according to Khorram, Marxist ideology."

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

A Saudi journalist tweeted against the government – and was executed for ‘high treason’; The Guardian, June 16, 2025

 , The Guardian; A Saudi journalist tweeted against the government – and was executed for ‘high treason’

"The Saudi government gained access to the real identities and IP addresses behind thousands of anonymous Twitter accounts following Saudi agents’ infiltration of the company in 2014-2015. The Department of Justice charged two former Twitter employees and a Saudi national in the plot. Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty by a federal jury of fraud, conspiracy, acting as a foreign agent for bribes, and conveying user information to the kingdom on behalf of the royal family. At the time, assistant attorney general Matthew Olsen of the justice department’s national security division, said the guilty verdict showed the justice department would hold accountable anyone who aids “hostile regimes in extending their reach to our shores”. Two other indicted men fled to Saudi before they could be arrested.

A Twitter spokesperson said in 2021 that it acted swiftly at the time of the incident when it learned there were malicious actors accessing Twitter user data. That view has been challenged by the family of another man who was arrested after the Twitter breach, who believe the social media platform is at least partly responsible for dissidents’ arrests.

Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, a former aide worker, was arrested in 2018 and sentenced three years later to 20 years in prison and a 20-year travel ban. He is alleged to have maintained an anonymous account that mocked the kingdom’s leaders.

“They broke his hand, smashed his fingers, saying this is the hand you tweet with,” Areej al-Sadhan told CBS News in a 2023 interview. “They tortured him with electric shocks, beating and sleep deprivation.”

Reporters without Borders said al-Jasser was the first journalist to be sentenced to death and executed in Saudi under the rule of Mohammed bin Salman, and the second in the world since 2020, when Amadnews director Ruhollah Zam was put to death in Iran."

Sunday, June 15, 2025

National Parks Are Told to Delete Content That ‘Disparages Americans’; The New York Times, June 13, 2025

, The New York Times; National Parks Are Told to Delete Content That ‘Disparages Americans’


[Kip Currier: These Interior Department directives of the Trump administration are censorious and should not be normalized in a democracy.

Historical facts and accounts are communal and collective in nature. Historical narratives and chronicles are not the property of an administration to cherry-pick, deselect, deny, clean up, and cover up. Yes, history is interpretative in nature. But history belongs collectively to all of us, not the administrative government in charge at a particular time: the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of history.

Sanitization and censorship of history is what totalitarian and autocratic states do. It's what the current Russian regime has done in whitewashing and rehabilitating the reputation of Stalin and Soviet Russia by closing down museums that present facts the Putin government does not approve of. It's what the present one-party state in China has done in squelching any mention of the Tiananmen Square student-led protests of 1989. It's also what Donald Trump has done in referring to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as a "day of love" and calling the insurrectionists "hostages". And it's what the Pentagon has wreaked in purging historical figures from its websites and removing books from its academy and military base libraries.

George Orwell's 1984 (published in 1949, four years after the Allied nations' defeat of the fascist Axis powers in 1945) warns us where this kind of state-sanctioned censorship can lead. A 2024 Smithsonian article ("What Does George Orwell's '1984' Mean in 2024?") on the 75th anniversary of the book identifies its most important themes as:

"the denial of objective truth, which we see everywhere about us, every war that’s currently taking place anywhere in the world and in quite a lot of domestic political situations, too; the manipulation of language … and the use of words to bamboozle people; and the rise of the surveillance society. … That to me, is the definition of the adjective ‘Orwellian’ in the 21st century.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-does-george-orwells-1984-mean-in-2024-180984468/

1984 describes the fictional Oceania totalitarian super-state's so-called Ministry of Truth: a department and policy approach that rewrites and represses history. It spreads propaganda. It inverts truth: 

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.



 

Will more teachers and faculty members, historians, university and college administrators and boards, librarians, museum curators, archivists, and other U.S. citizens speak out against this administration's autocratic sanitization and suppression of history?]


[Excerpt]

"The Interior Department plans to remove or cover up all “inappropriate content” at national parks and sites by Sept. 17 and is asking the park visitors to report any “negative” information about past or living Americans, according to internal documents.

It’s a move that historians worry could lead to the erasure of history involving gay and transgender figures, civil rights struggles and other subjects deemed improper by the Trump administration.

Staff at the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department, were instructed to post QR codes and signs at all 433 national parks, monuments and historic sites by Friday asking visitors to flag anything they think should be changed, from a plaque to a park ranger’s tour to a film at a visitor’s center.

Leaders at the park service would then review concerns about anything that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times),” according to slides presented this week at a meeting with park superintendents. By Sept. 17, “all inappropriate content” would be removed or covered, according to the presentation."