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This commentary was published in commemoration of International Fact-Checking Day 2024, held April 2 each year to recognize the work of fact-checkers worldwide. Angie Drobnic Holan is director of the International Fact-Checking Network. From 2013 to 2023 she was editor-in-chief of the U.S.-based fact-checking website PolitiFact.

A recent Supreme Court case put a spotlight on how social media companies like Meta moderate content on their platforms. It also put a spotlight on critics who say that content moderation and the fact-checking that goes with it is a form of censorship.

The Supreme Court case is primarily about the governments actions in dealing with tech platforms: Did the Biden administration go too far in asking for takedowns of vaccine-related misinformation? For years, similar attacks have been aimed at fact-checkers. As director of the International Fact-Checking Network, Ive watched this movement label fact-checkers as part of a censorship industrial complex, claiming that fact-checkers are trying to suppress debatable information.

Ironically, this deeply misleading argument itself is aimed at suppressing critique and debate.

The misinformers have long known that the old saying knowledge equals power can be perverted by following a simple rule of might makes right. In other words, by shouting loudly enough and often enough in the public square, motivated messengers can sway public opinion even when the message is factually inaccurate.

One of the top examples that critics of fact-checking mention is the COVID-19 lab leak theory a compelling example, because the ultimate origin of COVID is still unknown and uncertain. But its a very poor example of actual censorship.

Fact-checkers looked at the lab leak theory when internet memes claimed that COVID was man-made that it came from biological laboratories where scientists study and sometimes manipulate disease-causing viruses. The theory had dramatic variations: Some said COVID was the creation of irresponsible scientists playing with virus variants, while others said that COVID was a bioweapon created by the Chinese government and released upon the world purposefully. Less dramatically, people wondered if it was a naturally occurring virus that escaped a laboratory due to carelessness.

Each of those ideas had wildly different ramifications. Fact-checkers were initially skeptical of all the theories, but they revised their work to express more uncertainty when confronted with new evidence. Because they were fact-checkers, they credited the new evidence, rather than trying to push it away for ideological or political reasons. The theory has remained widely debated and much discussed.

And to be clear, many of the social media posts about COVID that were taken down during the pandemic were not because they were fact-checked, but because they ran afoul of other social media policies on community standards and public harm. Social media companies do not typically remove false information because of factual correction alone. Takedowns typically happen for illegal content; content that could cause public harm; or content that runs afoul of rules on hate speech or other community standards.

Critics of fact-checkers have tried to muddy this distinction, and as a fact-checker, I worry they are succeeding. But the truth is that no fact-checker has been given authority by any tech platform to take down content. The fact-checkers I work with would rather see inaccurate content contextualized and labeled, so it can remain part of the public record and the public debate.

Fact-checkers strong desire to keep information available and accessible is yet another irony of the fact-checkers-as-censors argument. The reality is that fact-checking is an activity deeply embedded in the ideals of free speech and free expression. Fact-checkers require the right and ability to freely investigate ideas, find sources, read widely and interview experts who can speak candidly, all as part of their methodology and process. This intellectual freedom is the bedrock on which all fact-checking is built. Countries with strong traditions of free expression and freedom of the press tend to have a lot of fact-checkers, while countries with press restrictions tend to have few. The roster of fact-checkers who participate in the International Fact-Checking Network shows this trend clearly.

When fact-checkers arent dealing with accusations of censorship, we face another crisis of confidence among those who might otherwise support us. Theres a trend among both the right and the left to say that fact-checking doesnt work, or that its been proven ineffective. Nothing could be further from the truth though it does depend a lot on what people mean by fact-checking working or being effective.

Often, by working, skeptics of fact-checking mean that it doesnt change peoples political views or sway their outlooks. Thats true; fact-checking doesnt do that. But its not supposed to. Politics experts have long known that peoples political views tend to be changed by discussions and persuasion from their friends and family, not by reading fact checks.

Another complaint is that fact-checking is not a solution to the problem of misinformation on the internet. But misinformation isnt a problem that can be solved with a single approach. Saying fact-checking doesnt work is a bit like saying we should get rid of firefighters because buildings are still catching fire.

Fact-checkings actual aim is to continuously improve the quality of information that people use to make decisions about their own lives. Research has shown that fact checks are highly effective in correcting misperceptions around false claims, and this is vitally important in an online world where everyday photos are taken out of context; where manipulated audio is passed off as real; and where video game footage is presented as video from actual military conflict.

In these contexts, fact-checking journalism is a crucial safety mechanism that helps weed out factually false information. Fact-checkers have debunked demonstrably false claims about the efficacy of vaccines; about the location and dates of elections; about the falsity of war propaganda, and about beloved celebrities who are still alive. During elections, they provide critical context to public policy issues from health care to economics to foreign policy, and they correct the excesses of political messaging that distorts and deceives average voters trying to make common-sense decisions.

Are fact-checkers perfect? We are not. We are human beings subject to human error. But thats why fact-checkers have corrections policies. The value of fact-checking is that it seeks conclusions based on evidence and logical processes, and fact-checkers correct their reports when confronted with new evidence. Rather than having a predetermined political agenda, fact-checkers try to compile the best of what is known for the benefit of all stakeholders.

In recent years, critics of fact-checking have been emboldened to make false claims about fact-checking itself, in order to promote a survival-of-the-fittest, anything-goes atmosphere on the internet and in the world when it comes to public debate. They want the loudest voices to win the fight, regardless of logic, evidence or coherence.

Fact-checking stands as a check on that noise, ever reminding us that evidence can be complicated and uncertain, that volume isnt the same thing as verity, and that the truth is something that must be worked out continuously, again and again, but never once and for all.

Read more here:
Lets say it plainly: Fact-checking is not censorship - Poynter

I recently read Gender Queer, Maia Kobabes best-selling memoir about coming of age as a nonbinary person. Its an honest and forthright portrayal of the challenges facing sexual minorities in our society. Im outraged that so many schools and libraries have banned or restricted it.

But Im also outraged that some libraries and bookstores have banned Abigail Shriers book, Irreversible Damage, which attributes the rise of gender surgeries among young women to social contagion that is, to the messages these women are receiving rather than to their inherent identities.

Thats how I differ from some of my fellow liberals, who scream bloody murder about restrictions on books they love but seem perfectly happy to remove ones that they loathe. I understand and, in many ways, share their distaste for Irreversible Damage. But you cant fight censorship with one hand if youre furthering it with the other.

Consider the kerfuffle earlier this year in Blue Hill, Maine, an affluent, left-leaning community with a well-endowed public library. When the library accepted a donation of Irreversible Damage and placed it on display, residents posted angry messages on Facebook and accosted the librarys staff at the local post office and grocery store.

They would say, I cant believe the library is allowing this, the library board president recounted. My feeling was, I cant believe the library would not allow it, based on its position on free access to information.

I cant believe it, either, but its happening. When it comes to free expression, even liberals have become illiberal.

That includes the American Booksellers Association, which proudly touts its anti-censorship bona fides. A sponsor of Banned Books Week, an annual event that proclaims the value of free and open access to information, the association issued an abject apology after it sent Irreversible Damage to 750 bookstores in 2021.

An anti-trans book was included in our July mailing to members, the American Booksellers Association declared, noting the pain and harm it had caused to the trans community. This is a serious, violent incident that goes against ABAs policies, values, and everything we believe and support. It is inexcusable.

Heres whats inexcusable: An organization ostensibly devoted to the freedom to read closed the book on it. According to illiberal liberals, you should be free to read what they like. Everything else is off the table.

So in the wake of the George Floyd police murder in 2020, the resolutely leftist school district in Burbank, Calif., barred teachers from assigning To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, on the grounds that these books (which both use the N-word) cause harm and trauma to Black students.

Never mind that many leading Black authors from Langston Hughes to Toni Morrison have praised Huck Finn, which indicted American slavery and racism. These books threaten young readers, the argument goes. We cant allow that.

And never mind that conservatives have invoked the same argument to ban Gender Queer and other LGBTQ-themed books. In Cumberland, Maine just a few hours down the coast from Blue Hill a parent read several passages from Gender Queer to his school board and demanded that it be removed from the school library. Thats what our kids are seeing, and youre OK with that? he asked, calling the passages pornographic.

Thankfully, the Cumberland school board retained Gender Queer for its high school library. And Im also grateful to report that the town library in Blue Hill stuck to its guns and held on to Irreversible Damage.

But it got no help from the American Library Association, another sponsor of Banned Books Week. When the librarys director reached out to the ALA for a letter of support, he said, it ghosted him.

To her credit, the director of the ALAs Office for Intellectual Freedom privately apologized to him. She also told reporters that she opposed using the tools of the censors against Irreversible Damage. But there would be no official statement of support from the ALA, where the book had sparked considerable internal debate.

Either you believe in intellectual freedom, or you dont. If you do, youll defend books that you find harmful or offensive.

That speaks volumes, in its own right. Whats to debate, really? Either you believe in intellectual freedom, or you dont. If you do, youll defend books you find harmful or offensive. And if you dont, youll try to eliminate them.

Next Monday is Right to Read Day, when the ALA asks citizens to stand up to censorship from organized pressure groups that want to ban books. And lets be clear: The vast majority of the attacks on books have come from the political right, not from the left.

But if my fellow liberals dont stand up for freedom for everyone we wont have a leg to stand on as conservatives try to tear it down. When we adopt the tools of the censor, everybody loses.

The rest is here:
The danger of liberal censorship | Opinion - The Philadelphia Inquirer

After accusing Al Jazeera of being a Hamas mouthpiece and repeatedly describing Al Jazeeras journalists as terror operatives, Israel now has the legislative means to carry out its threats to close the Qatari broadcasters bureau. This could happen very soon as Likud the party leading the ruling coalition has already said the Prime Minister would act immediately to close Al Jazeera.

The Israeli government already approved a regulation last November allowing the closure of foreign media, including Al Jazeera. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad voiced support for this decision at the time, considering that Al Jazeera endangers the activities of the Israel Defence Forces.

Al Jazeera journalists killed, injured by Israel strikes

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, at least 103 journalists have been killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes, including at least 22 in the course of their work. Three of them worked for Al Jazeera. The journalist Hamza al-Dahdouh the son of Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeeras bureau chief in Gaza and his colleague Moustafa Thuraya, were killed by an Israeli strike at the start of January.

They are taking revenge on us [the Gazan journalists] by killing our children, but that will not stop us, Wael al-Dahdouh said at the time. A month later, this leading journalist was himself injured by an Israeli strike that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa. In South Lebanon, Al Jazeera correspondent Carmen Joukhadar was one of the six journalists injured in an Israeli strike on 13 October that killed Reuters reporter Issam Abdallah.

Israel already inflicted terrible losses on Al Jazeera before 7 October. Its internationally renowned West Bank correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while reporting in Jenin on 11 May 2022. A year before that, in May 2021, RSF filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court after Israel air strikes destroyed around 20 media outlets in the Gaza Strip, including the Al Jazeera bureau.

Read the rest here:
Al Jazeera to be banned soon in Israel in unprecedented censorship after months of persecution - Reporters sans frontires

The kooky, macabre musical The Addams Family was named the most-produced tuner on U.S. high school stages for the 2022-23 school year. But there will be at least one less mysterious and spooky production for next years tally since a Pennsylvania school board voted to cancel a 2024 production, citing the shows dark themes.

Since 1938, the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) has polled theatre educators to identify the most-produced musicals and plays, but its latest survey also measured the impact of a troubling resurgence of censorship. A whopping 67 percent of educators told EdTA they are weighing potential controversies when they make show selectionsand with good reason.

In recent years, a so-called parents rights movement has staked a claim in controlling the K-12 curriculum, leading to a surge of banned books and restrictions on performances. Floridas House Bill 1069, which restricts media with sexual content, has even put Shakespeares oeuvre under scrutiny. Many lessons now only excerpt the Bards plays rather than teach them in full. As part of a counter-movement, the New York Public Library recently launched the Books for All initiative, making censored playscripts and musical libretti available online to teenagers nationwide.

The polarized political climate has only added to the backstage drama at high school theatre auditoriums, the latest arena for the culture wars. Parents and school board members are challenging show choices, requesting script changes, and outright canceling student productions with social or political themes, especially LGBTQ+ content. Last year, a Florida school gained traction on social media after canceling a production of Indecent, which centers on a queer Jewish romance. And last fall an Illinois school board canceled a production of The Prom, a musical about a group of Broadway actors who travel to a conservative town to help a lesbian student banned from bringing her girlfriend to the promthough in response to uproar over the decision, the show will in fact go on this spring.

In Indiana, students took matters into their own hands, independently staging the gender-bending play Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood after a school canceled the production for its LGBTQ+ themes. An Ohio school requested 23 revisions before staging The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, removing explicit language and the mention of gay characters. A Texas school board canceled a school field trip in response to a social media post accusing a production of James and the Giant Peach that featured actors playing both male and female roles as being a form of drag.

This disheartening trend of censoring playscripts and productions coincides with an uptick in conservative legislation aiming to limit queer representation in the classroom. The ACLU is currently tracking a staggering 233 schools and education bills that directly target LGBTQ+ rights and expression.

This threat of censorship not only robs theatre kids of time in the limelight; it also deprives young students in the audience of the opportunity to witness different human experiences. It targets educators and their beliefs and impacts howand whatthey teach. These attacks also affect dramatists and composers, whose works are being amended and pulled from libraries and stages.

Censorship was a major theme of the 2023 EdTA conference in St. Pete Beach, Fla., where middle and high school theatre educators gathered last September. The programming included The Courage to Produce, two sessions curated by Jordan Stovall, the director of Outreach and Institutional Partnerships at the Dramatists Guild of America (DG), about navigating controversies and best practices for educators. The sessions were inspired by the Dramatists Legal Defense Funds Dramatic Changes: A Toolkit for Producing Stage Works on College Campuses in Turbulent Times. The following excerpt from a conversation between Jessica Lit, the DGs director of business affairs, and Nadine Smith, co-founder and executive director of Equality Florida, has been edited for length and clarity.

JESSICA LIT: Welcome to The Courage to Produce. If youre not familiar with the DG, we are a national trade association for playwrights, librettists, lyricists, and composers, and our mission is to aid dramatists in protecting the artistic and economic integrity of our work. Our sister organization, the DLDF, was created in 2011 to advocate and educate and provide resources in defense of the First Amendment. Since its inception, its been an active voice in supporting institutions which have been the targets of attacks on free speech, including the recent cancellation of Indecent at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Fla. The DLDF also recently partnered with the EdTA to establish standards for protecting free expression when theatrical works are taught in educational institutions.

Today I am joined by the co-founder and executive director of Equality Florida, Nadine Smith. Equality Florida is Floridas statewide civil rights organization dedicated to securing full equality for Floridas lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. Would you like to talk a little bit about Equality Florida and introduce yourself?

NADINE SMITH: Good morning. I live in St. Pete, and we founded Equality Florida when we realized that we were doing lots of local work, but this place called Tallahassee, out in the middle of nowhere, was where big decisions were being made that impacted our lives. Actually, weve been around for 27 yearsformally in January of 97, but we existed before then.

For decades, we held at bay all of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Florida. But 20 years of increasingly extreme Republican control of every level of government has sort of metastasized with Trump and DeSantis. And so we saw in these last two years what began first and foremost as an attack on the transgender community, trans kids in particular, and we also saw a whitewashing of historyno more racist dog whistles; it is a foghorn. Weve seen bodily autonomy attacked in every way, from abortion bans to banning access to medical care for the trans community, and a stripping away of rights.

One of the ways thats shown up most visibly has been the banning of books and theatre. I think its important for people to understand that this isnt some movement that has grown organically from concerns raised by parents. The Florida legislature wrote the law in such a way that any resident of the county, they dont even have to be a parent, can get any book pulled off the shelf in Florida. Its a de facto ban even when its not a technical bani.e., schools fear they are vulnerable to lawsuits if they dont remove books preemptively.

We were talking earlier about, how often do you think of eras in American history, where we see these book bans, a clamping down on art? And what else usually arrives with that? We have to raise the alarm at how perilous this moment is, at how normalized things that should be not just abnormal but hideous to us have become. You know, when they banned The Life of Rosa Parks, we were like, This is outrageous. And now its like, yeah, there were just another 10,000 titles pulled off shelves.

Im a Shakespearean actor, paid for it as well. In schools in Florida, they will not do Shakespeare because of how many gender-reversed roles there are in Shakespeare plays. So they will do excerpts.

JESSICA: Thank you, Nadine. Im going to introduce myself. Im the director of business affairs for the DG, and I do a lot of advocacy work. I also help in creating resources for educators, and for our members, to help advocate for their rights in the industry.

Were all here because we love theatre and its ability to bring people together to tell stories that may not have been told, to be a vehicle for change. We understand that censorship and cancellations arent new. Theyve been around for as long as stage plays have been around. But as Nadine has just talked about, there are new trends, and its not just angry voices. Its legislation coming down from our local, our state, our federal governments that we need to start thinking about as we enter this new era.

Today there is proposed, pending, and passed legislation in many states. Nadine, you talked a little bit about the book banning thats happening in Florida, but is there other legislation that theatre educators should be aware of as they move through this new time?

NADINE: Yeah, bans on drag queens or drag performances. The insinuation is that any time somebody is performing in drag, it is inappropriate for children to be present. So if you bring your child to a play like Twelfth Night, have you brought them to a drag show? Have you exposed them to a dangerous ideology that will play tug of war with their gender identity?

In Florida there was a program at a theatre in Orlando, similar to a drag Christmas. They ended up putting on tickets for the first time that no one under 18 was allowed. The governor insisted that law enforcement be present. They left the theatre and said nothing untoward occurred, nothing inappropriate. The governor went after their beverage license anyway, claiming that the language on the ticket was printed too small to be of value, and that even though there was nothing sexually inappropriate, the fact that there were people performing opposite of their gender was sufficient to pull their license. They only just settled with three businesses; one of them was Hamburger Marys. People are touting it as a win, but the chilling effect is very real.

The chilling effect is intentionally vague so that it casts a big shadow. The impulse is to go, I dont want any problems. I will do the least dangerous thing. I will do the thing that is so far from the line that I cant get caught up even in their overzealous prosecution. And slowly, the impact of that, not the actual letter of the law, begins to create the worst kind of censorship, which is self-censorship, where we dont even permit ourselves to think things or pursue things because of a fear of what that vagueness might ensnare.

In the same way they say sunlight is the best disinfectant, ensure that anything which is vague is made concrete. Say to them: Would you put in writing why this play is impermissible by law? Six months from now, that could be the most important document in a lawsuit. Make them be explicit about why. And if youre in a place where these restrictions arent being put and youre not constrained by them, I would say, make sure that youre building this into all of your performances.

Its a time for courage. You might be that person in your school district, in your institution, along the chain whos going to disrupt people sinking to the path of these resistances.

JESSICA: I think what you highlighted specifically is that schools are where kids are being introduced to ideas and cultures for the first time, and we shouldnt shy away from introducing them to these cultures and different opinions and different viewpoints and different lifestyles because were afraid that they cant handle it. If anyone can handle it, its young minds who havent been exposed to the discrimination, the hate, and all those things yet. This is actually a great segue to our next question for you.

Can you speak about the importance of addressing topics of queer identity, relationships, self-actualization in the classroom? We know that high school and middle school theatre is an entry point for many kids who identify with the LGBTQ+ community.

NADINE: You know, I am 58. I know, I look good. [Laughter.] I remember being young, being fearful, and being homophobic to try to put people off the trail, especially playing basketball and softball. I had to throw out a lot of diversionary tactics, though not very effectively. So I understand how internalized homophobia shows up as bigotry in the world. And all of that is by way of saying that, I felt an extraordinary amount of isolation. And there are a lot of young people who do not survive that level of isolation. The suicide rate among LGBTQ+ young people is often talked about, but theres also the homeless rate, the dropout rate, the self-medicating rate, when you have no place you can turn and the only places that you spend the majority of your time, which are school and home, are hostile environmentsthe world gets very small very fast.

Representation and visibility are literally life-saving. I want to ring the alarm bell so loudly. The dangerous normalization of these hideous laws has created a world in which young people are watching their favorite teachers who created safety for them leave the profession. Theyre seeing empty spaces on bookshelves. All of the books are being taken out of classrooms because they havent gone through the approval process. Even donating books that reflect different experiences is no longer permitted.

For people who live in other states, start organizing. In Illinois, they passed a ban on book bans. Its important that there be a countervailing message, and in places where youre not having to fend off these attacks, go on the offensive and make a big deal. Vilify whats happening in Florida and other states. We have to take it that seriously and not just wait until the wolf is at the door.

JESSICA: Thank you. Im actually going to take a question out to those in the room. How many of you have faced challenges when youre teaching or presenting works? Or had students come to you asking questions about the current legislative landscape that were living in?

A show of hands indicates there are educators present that have experienced this. One educator in a Catholic school speaks on the particular challenges they faced with administration when attempting to cast a transgender child in a production, and navigating bringing works by different artists into the classroom.

NADINE: The only purpose of this is to create moral panic. Its a playbook, and it plays out again and again. Because we havent gone through the conciliation process required of our history, we have all of these unexamined and unresolved ways of dealing with difference in America that show up episodically as this massive backlash.

Theres a professor at Boston University named Stephen Prothero and hes written several books. One of them is about this phenomenon. He says the backlash is a lagging indicator of how much progress weve made. The only reason theyre going after us is because young LGBTQ+ people are visible, do feel like they have a place in the world, are showing up as their full selves in school, are finding a support network among their teachers. And so, basically, he says, by the time the backlash arrives, the cultural tipping point has already come.

I think of it as a slingshot, where they are grabbing that slingshot and theyre walking us backwards. But what they dont realize is theyre creating this dynamic tension that will leave their grip. We wont just go back to where we were when they attacked. Were going to propel forward into a world that looks much more like one that includes all of us.

Another educator speaks about the experience of dealing with community-wide controversy and issues with their administration over a production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

NADINE: I think we have to come out of the closet and tell these stories, share much more of how these things are happening. Every time we make them shut things down or we make them explain, we also are kind of showing this universe of people how to fight back.

One university in Florida was told they had to take down the universitys equity and inclusion policy. And what they did was they said, Heres our former diversity, equity, and inclusion policy. We have been ordered by the state to remove it. So we want you to know that this is no longer our diversity, equity, and inclusion policy. Of course, then everybody read their diversity, equity, and inclusion policy.

Im saying weve got to be creative. I love that you keep taking it back to the students and saying, How do we tell this lesson that teaches them how to navigate? Coming up with these ideas and strategies that dont put students in the position of, Hey, Im going to defend you, Im going to risk it all to defend you, which is one instinct, but rather, Youre not powerless in the face of this. They cant stop your voice. They cant stop your TikTok. They cant stop your message online. Heres the phone call to PEN America, you may go to the Dramatist Legal Defense Fund, or here are the articles that have been written that can contextualize this. Heres the background on these organizations that are systematically going after art. By showing them these things, I think theyre going to emerge into society as people who dont quietly capitulate. They want you to be fearful.

NADINE: Even though young people are experiencing these really ugly, fascistic impulses that are curtailing their rights, how you guide them in those moments may produce more of what we need in this world.

Another educator speaks on their experiences with censorship, community backlash, and having books and plays removed from their schools library system after attempting to add them to the curriculum.

NADINE: We started a group called Parenting with Pride precisely because [of issues like these]. One of the things I encourage is to be proactive and work with the PTA, work with the parents groups, work with the parents of the students in whatever youre creating. And say, Listen, I dont know if youre even watching these timelines, but this atmosphere has developed where one parent will complain on opening night, try and shut down all of the hard work of your kid, and we really need to be in this together. Which is a thing you probably never would have had to do or think about, but in this atmosphere, we have to go on the offense and we have to engage parents so that its not a mom consciously defending the virtues of children from sinister forces.

JESSICA: I want to speak a little bit about the First Amendment. It is different in high schools and middle schools than it is on college campuses, because your students are minors. But the Supreme Court has said that students and teachers do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. That is from Tinker v. Des Moines. Its a well-established freedom in our country.

I want to encourage all of you to use your voices to speak up, because while there is limited academic freedom, school boards and school administrations have a wider discretion in determining what kinds of materials can be taught. Discretion does not mean that they can censor something because theyre hostile to the ideas that are presented. There has to be a legitimate educational purpose for why they are removing or moving something.

Ill take the example of evolution. They may say, you know what, maybe fifth graders arent prepared to understand this concept so were going to move it to the eighth grade curriculum. Thats okay, but to say were not going to teach evolution because we dont believe in evolution, we dont understand evolutionthats unacceptable.

Also, speaking about personal freedom as it relates to you as teachers: Nadine talked about organizing in your community, using your voice outside of schools. They can only really go after you if what you are doing outside of school is substantially and materially disrupting whats happening in schools. So if you are going on your social media, you are organizing in your communities and creating protests outside of the school grounds or encouraging your students to do the same, you have that right under the First Amendment. I really want to make sure that youre aware of that. Even though you are in a different situation with schools, it doesnt mean that youre now completely eradicated of your First Amendment rights. Its something to really think about as you move forward.

And creating allies, not just with your parents and the kids, but within your community. One of the things that DLDF has done is rally people to attend school board meetings. Not just parents, but members of the community or people who care. Recently there was a cancellation of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in Ohio. We put out a statement, and many people attended a virtual school board meeting. The show went back on. It wasnt parents that were even local to Ohio. It was people who care about theatre, people who care about seeing different points of views.

When these things happen, dont think that you are isolated. Dont think youre alone. Think about the educators who are sitting here today. Think about the work that Equality Florida is doing. Come talk to us at the DG. We will do everything we can to help. We put out many statements, but we also have tried to help students find different venues to put a show on. There are resources available for you. Take advantage of them.

Its a scary time, but the louder we can be, the better.

To find out more about the Dramatists Guild, including the rights theatre writers have against censorship and cancellation of their work, visit http://www.dramatistsguild.com.

To find out more about the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, find out how to support this work, or to reach out regarding additional resources including Dramatic Changes: A Toolkit for Producing Stage Works on College Campuses in Turbulent Times, visit http://www.thedldf.org.

To learn more about Equality Florida, find out how to support this work, or to reach out regarding additional resources, visit http://www.egfl.org.

Support American Theatre: a just and thriving theatre ecology begins with information for all. Please join us in this mission by making a donation to our publisher, Theatre Communications Group. When you support American Theatre magazine and TCG, you support a long legacy of quality nonprofit arts journalism. Clickhereto make your fully tax-deductible donation today!

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The Courage to Produce: A Conversation on High School Censorship - American Theatre

In the city of Haifa, in northwest Israel, the sounds of Arabic, Hebrew and Russian chatter fill the streets.In the Arab-Christian neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas lies Beit Hagefen, an Arab-Jewish cultural centre set in gleaming white stone. For 60 years, its aim has been to promote tolerance between Jews and Arabs until last month, when one of their events was postponed and then cancelled following a recommendation from the citys legal advisor, Yamit Klein.

The event in question was a book launch for the Hebrew translation of Apeirogon, a novel by Irish author Colum McCann that tells the story of two grieving fathers, one Israeli, the other Palestinian, who are united by the death of their daughters. The event was supported by the Parents Circle-Families Forum, a joint Palestinian-Israeli group of families who have lost relatives in the conflict.

But the launch would never take place. The official reasons for its cancellation were concerns about its commercial aspects on municipal premises and the potential distress it could cause to those affected by past violence with references made to objections from families of terror attack victims. However, the move has also been interpreted as an attack on democratic principles and freedom of speech. In the eyes of many liberal Israelis, it is part of a broader, two-decade-long campaign led by Benjamin Netanyahu to suppress collaborative efforts between Israelis and Palestinians.

Such tactics arent confined to Netanyahu, however. The Israeli government has a long history of censorship: in 1970, for instance, the national unity government threatened to withdraw funding from the Cameri Theatre over Hanoch Levins play The Queen of the Bathtub. Often regarded as the most contentious theatrical work in Israel, Levin employed musical satire to critique what he saw as the nations militaristic tendencies, self-righteousness and racial prejudices following the triumph in the 1967 conflict. The play was stopped in 1970 after merely 19 shows, following a bomb threat at the Cameri Theatre, actors being pelted with stones in Jerusalem, and accusations branding Levin as a traitor to Israel.

But since then, Netanyahu has turned cultural censorship into an art form, encouraging journalists, politicians and charity workers to actively attack, censor and suppress any Left-wing efforts to cultivate a shared Jewish-Palestinian culture. This includes any initiatives that criticise or acknowledge the oppression or unequal treatment of Palestinians, or which hint at contentious events surrounding the nations birth.

Netanyahu has turned cultural censorship into an art form.

His efforts have paid off. This strategic reshaping of Israels cultural landscape has weakened the Israeli Left by silencing any talk of the occupation, Palestinian self-determination or Israels Zionist ethos. And it hasnt been difficult: in Israel, much of the cultural sector including theatre, music, and art is funded by taxes and therefore subject to oversight by the Knesset and the government. In 2023, for instance, Netanyahus culture minister, Miki Zohar, took issue with H2: Control Laboratory, a documentary about Israeli settlers occupation of Hebron. He ordered a retrospective examination of the films budget, arguing that works that harm the state will not be funded. That same year, Zohar also threatened to withdraw the budget from the film Two Kids a Day, about the arrest of Palestinian minors, while a performance by a 13-year-old was cancelled for fear of offending the ultra-Orthodox.

And thats not all. In 2015, the Ministry of Education disqualified a book for school study because it describes a romance between a Jewish woman and an Arab; in 2017, the Acre Fringe Theater Festival barred a play about Palestinian prisoners, leading to a boycott by eight theatre groups; in 2022, a police officer went on stage during a performance by Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar and ordered him to stop singing songs against the police that incite against Israel.

This is the core of the Netanyahu doctrine: any work of art that reflects on the shared grief of Israelis and Palestinians, or that challenges the official government narrative in any way, cannot be allowed to stand. The greatest champion of this effort is Miri Regev, who, as the Minister of Culture and Sport from 2015 to 2020, was notorious for her aggressive approach towards what she deemed as the cultural elite of Israel, referring to them as a cultural junta. (She once boasted: I am proud of having never read Chekhov.) And while her stated aim was to correct a historic cultural imbalance that has marginalised Mizrahi and other non-European Jewish traditions in favour of Ashkenazi norms, in reality, her tenure was marked by a number of campaigns against Leftists, Palestinians and secularists. In 2019, for instance, she allocated 8 million shekels (1.7 million) for films promoting settler life.

Arguably, Regev has done more than anyone else to stifle free speech in the Israeli arts. In 2018, she championed the Loyalty in Culture law, which allows the Ministry of Culture to reduce or refuse funding to cultural institutions that are perceived to deny the Jewish and democratic nature of the State of Israel; incite racism, violence, or terrorism; commemorate Israels Independence Day as a day of mourning; or desecrate the states flag or national symbols. With this law, Right-wing politicians can strangle pretty much any cultural movement they deem ideologically treacherous.

And for those they dont tackle, there are plenty of other Israeli groups lining up to enforce Bibis doctrine. One of these is Im Tirtzu, founded by Right-wing activist Erez Tadmor, who has a criminal record for stealing military equipment. In 2016, Im Tirtzu launched its Shtulim (moles) campaign, which implicated well-known human rights advocates, artists and writers in terrorist activities, effectively branding them as traitors to Israel. Tadmor went on to serve as an advisor for the Likud Party under Netanyahu in 2019. Another organisation is Betzalmo, founded by ultranationalist Shamai Glick. Despite presenting himself as a human rights advocate, Glick uses legal intimidation and political pressure to cancel or disrupt Left-wing events run by the enemy.

Unsurprisingly, since October 7, many of these organisations have increased their crackdowns on artists and writers demonstrating against the war, especially those from the Arab community. Elsewhere, liberal academics have been suspended and social media influencers persecuted. There is a growing sense among Israels cultural figures that any anti-war expression will be punished.

Israel thus risks facing a fate worse than state censorship and thats a culture of self-censorship, which will render a shared Israeli-Palestinian narrative not just improbable, but unattainable. Terrified of losing out on public funding, or provoking a public backlash, Left-wing cultural figures are already tiptoeing around certain political subjects. Yet pandering to the government can create other problems, as Left-wing groups such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) will boycott any cultural institution associated with Netanyahu. As a result, even artists who critique his policies, but rely on government support, may be vulnerable to boycotts themselves.

Faced with this hostile climate, the path of least resistance is usually to stay silent. Already in 2019, a study by Professor Dana Arieli revealed that self-censorship among Israeli artists and curators had significantly increased: in 2005, fewer than 10% reported experiencing censorship, but by 2019, their number had risen to more than 50%. Even before October 7, then, an ominous hush was descending upon Israels theatres. Over the past six months, it has only grown more pronounced: a deafening silence of acquiescence, as poets and thespians lay down their scripts and pens in despair.

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Netanyahu's regime is built on censorship Israeli culture is being smothered by silence - UnHerd