Last week attended a talk about Intellectual Freedom given by the ALA's top authority on the subject. I routinely joke about not being proud to be an American, but after being reminded of our basic freedoms, I have a renewed pride in our political system (despite the current political majority).
I wanted to summarize my notes from the meeting.
- Intellectual freedom is more than a library value it is an American value.
- Intellectual freedom applies to ALL "US-Persons"
- There are two ways to limit freedom
- TyrannicalGovernment
- Tyrannical Majority
- The greatest threat to freedom is ignorance
- Marketplace of ideas: The basic theory that ALL ideas have the right to be heard. The theory depends on the assumption that bad ideas will fizzle out and good ideas will rise to the top. The marketplace of ideas also is a place for people to go to learn and defend themselves against the bad ideas that have occurred throughout history. The library provides access to the 'Marketplace of ideas'
- What is protected in the following senareo: a. research a bomb, make a bomb, or set off a bomb?
- I've been told that James Madison said something to the effect of: The greatest threat to Democracy is an uninformed populace.
- Individual Rights and individual responsibilities: Individuals are responsible for their behavior or actions NOT the institution that provided the information about the behavior or action.
- State laws cannot restrict freedoms more than the constitution, but they CAN give more freedoms.
- Never assume: A patron slammed down a book and started complaining about it's trashyness. The librarian was gearing up to give their intellectual freedom speech, took a second to ask, "What do you want me to do?" The patron said, "Find me a better book!!" It ended up that the patron wasn't concerned about the books presence in the library.
- Some professors want to ban books that contradict popular theories because they don't believe students can intelligently deal with conflicting ideas. For example, the book Black Athena deals with alternate views of Greek origins. This is a glaring example of how we are losing the ability to discuss opposite points of view.
- Example of how the 'Marketplace of ideas' helps people defend their ideas: A while ago a white supremacy group
