Office for Intellectual Freedom

The Freedom to Read Foundation is proud to announce the Gordon M. Conable Conference Scholarship. The Conable Scholarship enables a library school student or new professional to attend ALA's Annual Conference, with a specific focus on intellectual freedom meetings and programs.

The 2008 ALA Annual Conference will be held June 26–July 2 in Anaheim, CA.

The Conable Scholarship will provide for registration, transportation, housing for six nights, and a per diem. In return, the recipient will be expected to attend various FTRF and other intellectual freedom meetings and programs at conference, consult with a mentor/board member, and present a report about their experiences.

The deadline for submitting an application for the 2008 Conable Scholarship is Monday, May 5; the award will be announced on Wednesday, May 14. (Note: If the recipient is already registered for ALA’s Annual Conference, he or she will have their conference fee refunded.)

Gordon Conable was a California librarian and intellectual freedom champion who served several terms as president of the Freedom to Read Foundation. Following his unexpected death in 2005, his wife and FTRF created the Conable Fund, which provides funding for the Conable Scholarship. (The Conable Fund is still accepting donations - visit the Conable Fund homepage for details.)

For more information and to apply online, please visit the Conable Scholarship webpage. If you have questions, please contact Jonathan Kelley at (800) 545-2433 x4221 or jokelley@ala.org.

Controversy arose this week when librarians discovered that they could no longer use the word 'abortion' on POPLINE, a reproductive health database maintained by the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

When informed about the restriction, Dr. Michael J. Klag, the Dean of the Bloomberg School, reversed the decision and restored full access to the POPLINE database.

Loriene Roy, President of the American Library Association, issued the following statement on the controversy:

"We applaud Dr. Klag's swift action to restore full access to the POPLINE database. We are dismayed, however, at the circumstances that caused the administrators running the POPLINE database to begin blocking any and all searches on the word "abortion." Any federal policy or rule that requires or encourages information providers to block access to scientific information because of partisan or religious bias is censorship. Such policies promote ideology over science and only serve to deny researchers, students, and individuals on both sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information."

The National Constitution Center (NCC) now has an mp3 of last month's FTRF event featuring Anthony Lewis available on its website. Lewis discusses his new book, Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment.

Click here to listen!

For recordings of other NCC events, check out their audio archives, featuring speakers including Valerie Plame Wilson, Ken Burns, Scott Turow, and many, many more.

Many thanks to the National Constitution Center for their co-sponsorship and assistance with this event!

The First Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court's decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought by two sets of parents who objected when their children's schools provided their children with books offering positive portrayals of same-sex marriage and families headed by same-sex parents, including the frequently challenged children's book, King and King.

The parents claimed that the schools were systematically indoctrinating their young children contrary to the parents' religious beliefs concerning gay marriage, as well as requiring their children to affirm beliefs concerning the acceptability of gay marriage prohibited by their religion. The parents also claimed a violation of their right as parents to direct their children's education and religious upbringing.

The First Circuit rejected the parents' indoctrination claims. It held that there is no First Amendment free exercise right to be free from any reference in public elementary schools to the existence of families in which the parents are of different gender combinations. It also held that public schools are not obliged to shield individual students from ideas which potentially are religiously offensive, especially when the school does not require that the student agree with or affirm those ideas, or even participate in discussions about them.

The court also noted that the parents had voluntarily chosen to place their children in public schools and could not claim, as could the Amish, that they abided by a unique and demanding religious way of life fundamentally incompatible with any kind of schooling system.

"While we accept as true plaintiffs' assertion that their sincerely held religious beliefs were deeply offended," the court said, "we find that they have not described a constitutional burden on their rights, or on those of their children."

The court's full opinion is available on the web at
http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/07-1528-01A.pdf