Not even dictionaries are safe for children?

School officials at Menifee Union School District temporarily removed copies of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition for containing graphic terms like “oral sex” after a parent complained.

(But as it turns out, the dictionary did not even contain this term…)

Nonetheless, NCAC executive director Joan Bertin explains,

Removing a book should be based solely on its educational value, not on whether a few parents think it is a good or bad thing. On that theory, you would only have ‘Dick and Jane’ left in the library … We don’t think it is a good idea to remove dictionaries. It is a dictionary; its value is neutral. This just boggles my mind.

A committee will be reviewing the dictionary (as they say, it takes an army) to decide if it should be permenently removed. “We always welcome the public’s comments,” says the district’s Public Information Officer Betti Cadmus. Oh good. You can call or write the district here and tell them how you feel:

30205 Menifee Rd
Menifee, CA 92584
(951) 672-1851

Two words on the chalkboard in Oregon draw complaints from parents

Athey Creek Middle School in West Linn, Oregon has taught its eighth grade students a First Amendment curriculum for ten years, addressing the controversies surrounding commonly-banned books and reading the books in class. The unit drew no major criticism until early last month, when librarian and teacher Michael Diltz faced ire from several parents. He had written two common “obscenities” on the board and allowed students to say them aloud.

In an email message to parents, principal Carol Eagon explained that the use of the words “was meant to provoke student understanding and experience how words, taken out of context, can lose their significance. When taken out of context, an author’s words can move a community to ban that author’s book from a school library.”

In a comment on a School Library Journal article, Diltz said he did not read from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five as alleged. Instead, he used a page from a pro-censorship group’s website to demonstrate how readers should not “be distracted by words when the greater meaning and message of the book is what they seek to discover.” Diltz does not say which page he cited, but this one on the group’s site exemplifies his point that a list of the profane words in  Slaughterhouse-Five is a gross simplification of the meaning of the work.

By protesting the explicit use of the two words in class while dismissing the lesson’s intent, the objecting parents proved Diltz’s point. “There’s some irony there,” said district superintendent Roger Woehl.

Woehl has defended Diltz and the overall curriculum on banned books, but his two concessions—that Slaughterhouse-Five will never be taught, and that the teacher will not use profanity in class—are overkill. It would have been enough, as the school district also promises, to inform the parents about the curriculum before it takes place. That way, parents who object can choose to make their own children read alternate books, while the rest of the students remain able to take part fully in this important unit.

Consequences of the Google China conflict: Hillary Clinton for an open Internet

In an impassioned speech at the Newseum in Washington on January 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attacked countries who limit the free circulation of peaceful dissent and religious ideas on the Internet and those who use the Internet for the “darker purposes” of promoting violence and making sexual advances on minors. She also spoke about the increasing concern over cyberattacks. While admitting there are limits to online free speech that the US imposes, she presented these limits as universal, contrary to the unacceptable limits that are associated with repressive regimes:

All societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of Al Qaeda who are – at this moment – using the Internet to promote the mass murder of innocent people. And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing challenges that the international community must confront together. We must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the Internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the Internet for peaceful political purposes.

Note that “hate speech” ­ a type of speech still protected by the US Constitution is among the examples of outlining the limits of online speech. Hate speech is illegal in countries like France and Germany, but the US has not attacked them for that limitation of free speech. It appears there is no question regarding the wisdom of restricting free speech online (copyright restrictions, surveillance, Internet filtering in public libraries and schools, bans on obscene material, these are all US phenomena) ­ but also the conviction that OUR restrictions are good and reasonable, and theirs are bad and unreasonable. Maybe so, but let us, at least, be aware that a desire to impose our rules ­ no matter how good they look to us ­ on the rest of the world can be put into question and that any claim for “universal validity of government regulation” has to be taken with a grain of salt.

See Also:

Champions of free speech?: the Case of Google in China

and

Google and the Snake

Hillary: The Case

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
Anatole France

Even for true believers of the First Amendment, the decision in the latest campaign finance case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, raises difficult issues. (For a press report on the decision, click here.  For an analysis of the decision, click here.  For reference to multiple commentaries on the case, click here)

In a 5 – 4 decision, the Court struck down restrictions on expenditures for political campaigns by corporations and unions. The decision accords such organizations a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts to get their political message across, to advocate for specific candidates, and to influence the outcome of elections.  Justice Kennedy is eloquent and passionate about the importance of the First Amendment, language that is heartening to First Amendment advocates and will no doubt be cited to defend free speech rights in a variety of other contexts.   The decision will of course benefit institutions with different opinions and perspectives.  Indeed, many non-profit organizations that want to inform their members and the public about political candidates urged the Court to reach this result.

But the dissenting opinions raise troubling questions about the effect the decision will have on the integrity of elections, and whether the result will be to privilege the voices of the rich and powerful.  These questions reveal a problem largely avoided by the majority – that granting moneyed interests unfettered free speech rights necessarily undermines the ability of those with less means to be heard.  The First Amendment rights of some to influence the electoral process have been vindicated, but the rights of others to participate equally in the conversation have been largely ignored.

This case is part of a trend in which the Court is increasingly protective of corporate speech rights, while simultaneously cutting back on the speech rights of individuals, like students and government employees.  An important principle may have been upheld in this case, but the fact that only some will benefit from it remains profoundly disturbing.

Check out our previous commentary on First Amendment challenges to campaign finance laws.  For contrasting views of the decision from First Amendment advocates, compare this with this.

Google and the Snake

It is, literally, an old story. In the legend of the boy and the snake, a venomous snake asks a boy for help, and promises not to bite him. When the snake bites the boy despite his help, and the boy asks why, the snake says, “because I am a snake.”

The boy in the story learns an important lesson: despite the snake’s promises, in the end the snake behaves as his nature dictates.

Google has recently learned the same lesson.  Before 2005, Google’s Chinese presence was limited to a Google search page in Chinese, www.google.com/intl/zh-CN. But this site (which still exists) was frequently blocked, or returned incomplete results, for users in China; apparently the result of the so-called “Great Firewall,” known officially as the “Golden Shield Project”: the technological and human processes that the Chinese government uses to control users’ access to Internet content from outside the country.

As Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president for global communications and public affairs, told a Congressional committee in February 2006,

Our search results were being filtered; our service was being crippled; our users were flocking to local Chinese alternatives; and, ultimately, Chinese Internet users had less access to information than they would have had.

There are ways around the Chinese government’s Internet restrictions, and the restrictions themselves are often faulty.  But the vast majority of Internet users in China can only access material cleared by the government filters.

Champions of free speech?: the Case of Google in China

When, a few years ago, Google agreed to China’s restrictions on the circulation of information and started google.cn, it claimed that “increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed [Google's] discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.” Now, suddenly, Google is threatening to reverse its policy and close google.cn.

This change of mind came as a response to an intellectual property attack on Google, quite likely to have been conducted by the Chinese government. The fact that the hacking apparently had as one of its main goals the surveillance of Chinese dissidents was secondary in this case (Google, having blocked dissident sites in the past, is an unlikely champion of Chinese dissidents.)

While successfully presented as support for free speech, Google’s action was a direct result of an illegal, even in China, attack on protected source codes. An attack on privacy certainly has free speech implications, but it isn’t exactly to be equated with the free circulation of publicly available information on the Web ­ which is what most of us think about when it comes to Internet censorship. So, Google decided to pull out of China because of a threat to its security system by China’s elaborate apparatus of cyberattack, but presented that as a sacrifice in the cause of free speech.

Avatar, smoking and free speech

Avatar has incited controversy over Sigourney Weaver’s character’s smoking in the film, even though the character is decidedly not, as director James Cameron describes, “an aspirational role model” for teenagers. Anti-smoking advocates fear that children will mimic the vices they see onscreen — another theory in a long line of efforts to attribute social ills to media or other cultural influences.

But it’s a troubling conceit that controlling what kids see in the movies (or read in books, etc.) will prevent them from getting the “wrong” ideas or engaging in undesirable behavior.

writes NCAC executive director Joan Bertin.

Kids don’t exist in a cocoon that admits only socially approved messages. They observe real people smoking all the time, at home, on the streets, at parties and at friend’s houses. They also see people drinking and engaging in other risky behaviors. How young people, with different experiences, circumstances and personalities, respond to the multiple and sometimes mixed messages they receive from the media, parents, teachers, peers and the culture at large, is a complicated business.

Instead of getting up in arms, why not first consider how the behaviors — no matter how vile — contribute to the filmmakers vision, thus offering an interesting avenue for educating young people. Mr. Cameron explains that

From a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.

Sanitizing film is not likely to fundamentally modify child behavior, while it will certainly interfere with the filmmaker’s artistic vision and the messages a film intends to convey to its audience.

Wardrobe Malfunction Back in Court: An Update

While the display of Janet Jackson’s naked breast and nipple during a 2005 CBS broadcast of the Superbowl may have been fleeting, the legal ramifications stemming from the incident are anything but.

Last time we covered this case (here and here) the Supreme Court had vacated the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2007  decision in the matter of FCC v. CBS, the lawsuit that resulted from Ms. Jackson’s broadcasted “wardrobe malfunction”, and sent the case back down to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for consideration in light of the Court’s 5-4 decision in companion case FCC v. Fox.

The Court ordered the 3rd  Circuit to review the case and re-decide it in light of the majority holding in Fox, which found that the FCC had not been arbitrary or capricious in determining that these fleeting incidents of profane language were finable offenses.  Now the question is whether the same standard can be applied to fleeting nudity.

Supreme Court rejects dress code case

Earlier this week the Supreme Court denied petition to review a high school student’s challenge to his school’s dress code. In denying review, the Supreme Court has chosen to leave the lower court’s holding intact — a holding that serves as a dangerous curtailment of students’ rights of freedom of expression.

Paul “Pete” Palmer was found to be in violation of his school’s dress code when, in the fall of his sophomore year of high school, he wore a t-shirt to class that read “San Diego.” Palmer called his parents, who brought him a different t-shirt to change into. That shirt, however, was also found to be in violation of the dress code, for it read “John Edwards for President ’08″ across the front.

In response, Palmer sued the school district for violating his freedom of speech under the First Amendment. Palmer argued that the school’s dress code contravened the principles espoused by the Supreme Court over 40 years ago in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District. In Tinker, which is the seminal case regarding the free expression of students, the Supreme Court held that restrictions on protected speech cannot be justified unless there is a “showing that students’ activities would materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school.”

Bad times for t-shirts, Yale

T-shirts printed by the Freshman Class Council for football games against Harvard have traditionally featured taunts and put downs of the rival institution, and vice-versa, but this year the featured text – “I think of all Harvard men as sissies,” – proved too provocative for the increasingly sensitive Yale palate. After the LGBT co-op criticized the text (as it happens, it is a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise) for being a “thinly veiled anti-gay slur,” it was replaced by a rather lame H with a slash through it.

This is the second time in a few months we have evidence of Yale’s exacerbated sensibilities to speech that may provoke offense. In the summer of 2009, the university removed all images from a book on the Danish Cartoon controversy because of possible future violence. Perhaps, in fact, it’s Yale, not Harvard, who is the sissy.  (Oh, oops, was that offensive?)