Uses national guidelines, collection development texts, and the intellectual freedom literature to assess the practical value of the Library Bill of Rights in school library settings. Discussion focuses on invoking the statement as support when dealing with challenges to the collection. Appendixes include the Library Bill of Rights itself and…

Examines public records laws regarding access to computerized format as it has developed in state and federal courts and legislatures. Explores the law at the federal level, which generally limits the ability of requestors to obtain records in a format most useful to them. Surveys state cases, in which there is a split of authority on the issue.…

Claims that the possibility of freedom is an aspect of one's individuality, and this possibility must be actualized through circumstances and conscious involvement with other human beings. Argues education should open spaces to enable poor and minority children to imagine new possibilities for themselves. (NH)

Provides a critique of certain social and institutional tendencies inimical to the development of social democracy and democratic community, especially conformity generated by bureaucratized social institutions, religious absolutism, and intolerance. Discusses the primary values of freedom and equality as critical to the development of democratic…

Describes discussion at the Salzburg Seminar on the meanings of autonomy in European and American higher education, and explores why, for eastern European and former Soviet universities, the quest for academic freedom is complicated: greater institutional and faculty autonomy has brought more dependence on external funding. (EV)

Presents the views of several college faculty members on the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Comments touch on academic freedom, personal reactions, and campus response. (EV)

Surveys the most significant court cases in 2000 involving First Amendment rights in higher education, especially those that may have received scant attention when decided but which promise to affect campus life for years to come. Provides insight into legal trends and shifting thinking as it applies to the First Amendment in the college and…

The case of the University of Missouri Extension's role in a very controversial study on dairy compacts illustrates that care must be taken to conduct such studies in an objective and scholarly manner without unnecessarily alienating stakeholders. Academic freedom and integrity must be maintained. At the same time, Extension cannot operate…

Argues that writing instructors must balance the harm students' words might do to themselves and their audiences against respect for their right to hold and express aberrant opinions. Suggests the scales be weighted toward the students' best interests and away from the teachers' political or ideological agendas. (NH)

A federal district court reinstated a competent volleyball coach when her Utah district reassigned her after discovering her gayness. The case seems a clear-cut lesson for school officials. Closer examination reveals the line drawn (between private behavior and public expression) that administrators and judges face when addressing homosexuality.…

Discusses the concept of freedom in a global context, focusing on the Asian perspectives of three spokespersons: Zhuangzi or Chuang Tzu, a Daoist (Taoist) poet-philosopher in 4th-century-BCE China; Indian-born Nobel economist Amartya Sen, whose work on poverty links development with freedom; and Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese democratic leader and…

A culture can be remembered and studied by the artwork it leaves behind. The artwork gives more than a pictorial or historical record of that culture. It also reveals the cultural practices and beliefs that form the accepted boundaries for the expression of culture. These boundaries are aesthetics. It is human nature to sometimes challenge these…

The featured document that is the main topic of this article, Robert E. Lee's Demand for the Surrender of John Brown and his Party [at Harpers Ferry], October 18, 1859, is from the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780s-1917; Record Group 94, and is in the holdings of the National Archives. As a part of "Teaching with…

When the American Legion set out to help bring down one of the Progressive Era's most prominent progressive educators, Harold Rugg, it did so out of a long-standing conviction that any form of anti-Americanism must be met head on and extinguished in the most expedient manner. Legion members, ever alert to anti-American rhetoric, believed that they…

Young people have long sported T-shirts that schools wish they'd leave at home. Legal fights have been waged in recent years, for example, over shirts about guns, abortion, the Confederate battle flag, and the war in Iraq. But at a time when gay rights remains a divisive and unsettled issue nationally, a recent spate of disputes over T-shirts on…