[Peace] Freedom to Read: Ethnic Studies Under Fire / Thursday, October 18, 2012 • 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. Urbana Free Library

[Karen Medina]

[Banned Book Week Goes Into Overtime, Yay!]

Freedom to Read: Ethnic Studies Under Fire
A special program for Banned Books Week

Thursday, October 18, 2012 • 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Urbana Free Library / The Lewis Auditorium

Last year Arizona passed controversial legislation which essentially
outlawed the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified
School District. In January while classes were in session, seven books
(including Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years and Chicano! The
History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement) were “cleared
from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the textbook depository for
storage,” and teachers in the MAS courses were reassigned and
instructed by district administrators to refrain from using books in
which “race, ethnicity, and oppression are central themes.”

Intense debate and public protest followed. Prominent writers,
teachers, librarians, and activists for intellectual freedom say the
case highlights issues of censorship, discrimination, multicultural
education, and the targeting of immigrants.

As part of this special program for Banned Books Week we will host
three guests –

Debbie Reese – Publisher of American Indians in Children’s Literature
and author of articles published in library and education journals,
Debbie studies racism and stereotypes in literature for young people.
An activist scholar and blogger, she played a key role in calling
attention to what happened in Tucson, Arizona.

Barbara Jones – Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the
American Library Association, and the executive director of the
Freedom to Read Foundation. For her entire library career she has
focused on free speech issues as her specialty. She is currently
working with several library systems in the United States on the issue
of immigrant privacy rights and the role of librarians in supporting
those rights.

Francisco Baires - Community programs director at the University YMCA
at the University of Illinois, (where he works with C-U Immigration
Forum, is the director of La Linea Help Line, and is advisor to La
Colectiva, a University of Illinois student organization). Francisco
moved to Illinois from Tucson, Arizona, where he was deeply involved
in this issue.