The United Nations News Centre published two recent articles condemning homophobic bullying, violence and discrimination worldwide.
1. Homophobic bullying represents grave violation of human rights – Ban
2. UN issues first report on human rights of gay and lesbian people
Showing posts with label civil liberties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civil liberties. Show all posts
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
An Update on our Journal’s Article on the USA Patriot Act
In our special issue of the journal on the theme, “Schooling as if Democracy Matters,” we published several introductory essays to provide context for the articles that followed. The controversial scenario that we posed in the issue asked:
One of our two essays in the introduction focused on the controversy over civil liberties in U. S. democracy as it existed in 2008. See Brett Rubio and Bridget Baker article, “Are We Targeting Our Fellow Countrymen? The Consequences of the USA PATRIOT Act.”
With some of the provisions of this act about to sunset, Congress had the opportunity to exercise its oversight obligations and re-examine carefully the current state of the law. The most recent congressional action with its brief debate on the Patriot Act and related intelligence measures was commented upon in an editorial in today’s New York Times. The Times lamented Congress’s failed duty “to carefully re-examine the provisions, trim back excesses, and add safeguards to protect civil liberties,” by ignoring “the whole point of requiring that the provisions be periodically reviewed.” Instead, the powers were extended for another four years without any changes.
Three specific provisions of concern are highlighted in the Times editorial:
The questions we posed in our 2008 issue are as important and current today as they were then. How are we engaging our students in these questions? What kind of public are our public schools creating?
In this issue, we consider how we are to fulfill the traditional moral imperative of our schools -- to create a public capable of sustaining the life of a democracy. How do we do this in an age of the Patriot Act and similar anti-terrorism legislation in other countries, NSA surveillance, extraordinary rendition, preemptive wars, enemy combatants -- all likely to involve violations of civil rights and liberties and a curtain of government secrecy? What story do we tell our young about who we are, who we have been, and who we are becoming? How do we educate children about their identity in this global world? What sense are they to make of the "imperial" democracy they are inheriting? Is our new political environment a fundamental break with the past or an extension of longstanding trends? What are the implications of these forces for the education of the young on the foundations of our democracy and our collective identity?
One of our two essays in the introduction focused on the controversy over civil liberties in U. S. democracy as it existed in 2008. See Brett Rubio and Bridget Baker article, “Are We Targeting Our Fellow Countrymen? The Consequences of the USA PATRIOT Act.”
With some of the provisions of this act about to sunset, Congress had the opportunity to exercise its oversight obligations and re-examine carefully the current state of the law. The most recent congressional action with its brief debate on the Patriot Act and related intelligence measures was commented upon in an editorial in today’s New York Times. The Times lamented Congress’s failed duty “to carefully re-examine the provisions, trim back excesses, and add safeguards to protect civil liberties,” by ignoring “the whole point of requiring that the provisions be periodically reviewed.” Instead, the powers were extended for another four years without any changes.
Three specific provisions of concern are highlighted in the Times editorial:
One of the renewed provisions permits a roving wiretap on terrorism suspects who switch phone numbers or providers. While this is a useful tool, the lax rules for specifying who is the subject of the wiretap could invite abuse. Another provision permits the government to examine library, bookstore and business records without having to show that the material is related to a terrorism investigation. The third overly broad provision allows surveillance of “lone wolf” suspects with no known ties to a foreign power or recognized terror groups. It has never been used, but the low threshold for doing so is concerning.Congress has one more opportunity to provide some safeguards through a resubmitted amendment that has been put forth by Senator Patrick Leahy, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, that would call for “enhanced auditing and oversight of how the powers are being used." The amendment also proposes “an early sunsetting of ‘national security letters,’ which the F.B.I. has used to obtain evidence without a court order, and which have been widely abused.”
The questions we posed in our 2008 issue are as important and current today as they were then. How are we engaging our students in these questions? What kind of public are our public schools creating?
Saturday, April 23, 2011
ACLU Attorney to Facilitate Workshop on "Civil Rights in Schools 101" at WWU on April 27th.
For those of you in the Washington State area, we invite you to join us at a workshop called, "Civil Rights in Schools 101." It will be facilitated by Linda Mangel, the staff attorney and Equity Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. See information below.
Civil Rights in Schools 101 Workshop
Facilitated by Linda Mangel, Staff Attorney and Equity Director, ACLU-WA
• Date: Wednesday, April 27, 2011
• Time: 5:30 -7:30 pm
• Place: Center for Education, Equity and Diversity (CEED), Miller Hall 005, Woodring College of Education, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
Possible Topics covered:
Bullying and Harassment
Rights of pregnant students
Free Speech Rights
Discipline
Truancy
Achievement Gap
Disparate discipline
Athletics
Cyberbullying
Cell phone searches
Sponsored by the Journal of Educational Controversy and the Center for Education, Equity and Diversity at the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University, and co-sponsored by the Whatcom County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
Civil Rights in Schools 101 Workshop
Facilitated by Linda Mangel, Staff Attorney and Equity Director, ACLU-WA
• Date: Wednesday, April 27, 2011
• Time: 5:30 -7:30 pm
• Place: Center for Education, Equity and Diversity (CEED), Miller Hall 005, Woodring College of Education, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
Possible Topics covered:
Bullying and Harassment
Rights of pregnant students
Free Speech Rights
Discipline
Truancy
Achievement Gap
Disparate discipline
Athletics
Cyberbullying
Cell phone searches
Sponsored by the Journal of Educational Controversy and the Center for Education, Equity and Diversity at the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University, and co-sponsored by the Whatcom County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
School to Prison Pipeline -- Call for Papers from the Journal of Educational Controversy
The Journal of Educational Controversy announces its call for papers for Volume 7 Number 1.
THEME: The School-to-Prison Pipeline
CONTROVERSY ADDRESSED:
The School-to-Prison Pipeline refers to a national trend in which school policies and practices are increasingly resulting in criminalizing students rather than educating them. Statistics indicate that the number of suspensions, expulsions, dropouts or “pushouts,” and juvenile justice confinements is growing. Moreover, there is a disproportionate impact on students of color and students with disabilities and emotional problems. In this issue, we invite authors to examine the policy implications, the political ramifications, and the causes and possible solutions to this problem. Moreover, what are these policies teaching our children?
DEADLINE FOR MANUSCRIPTS: DECEMBER 31, 2011
PUBLICATION DATE: SUMMER 2012
http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/
THEME: The School-to-Prison Pipeline
CONTROVERSY ADDRESSED:
The School-to-Prison Pipeline refers to a national trend in which school policies and practices are increasingly resulting in criminalizing students rather than educating them. Statistics indicate that the number of suspensions, expulsions, dropouts or “pushouts,” and juvenile justice confinements is growing. Moreover, there is a disproportionate impact on students of color and students with disabilities and emotional problems. In this issue, we invite authors to examine the policy implications, the political ramifications, and the causes and possible solutions to this problem. Moreover, what are these policies teaching our children?
DEADLINE FOR MANUSCRIPTS: DECEMBER 31, 2011
PUBLICATION DATE: SUMMER 2012
http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Do Teachers have Free Speech Rights? An Update on Recent Court Decisions
Readers will remember the article by author Sam Chaltain in our winter 2008 issue of the journal, entitled, "Ways of Seeing (and of Being Seen): Visibility in Schools." Sam has his own website and blog at: "Democracy,Learning,Voice." Check it out. Sam gave us permission to reprint his article on teachers' rights from his website.
Free Speech for Teachers? Think Again . . .
by Sam Chaltain
Reprinted by permission from Democracy, Learning, Voice.
In case you missed it, there was a major case last week involving the First Amendment rights of teachers to make curricular content decisions. And the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling puts another nail in the coffin of the free-speech rights of public employees.
In the most recent case, an Ohio teacher’s contract was not renewed after controversy erupted over a few book assignments she made with her High School English class. As recently as a decade ago, the teacher may have had a legitimate chance in court (although not neccesarily). That’s because, prior to 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court evaluated public employee free-speech claims by using a test with two basic prongs. First, the court would determine whether the speech in question touches on a matter of public concern. If it did not, the teacher would receive no First Amendment protection whatsoever. If the speech did touch on a matter of public concern, the court would proceed to the balancing prong of the test, in which it would balance the teacher’s interest in commenting upon a matter of public concern against the school officials’ interest in promoting an efficient workplace of public service.
Prior to 2006, courts sometimes sided with school officials even though the public school teachers’ speech touched upon a matter of public concern. In one 2001 case, for example, the Eighth Circuit determined that a school principal did not violate the First Amendment rights of three teachers who were ordered to quit talking about the care and education of special needs students. Subsequent appeals in the case acknowledged that the teachers’ complaints about the lack of care for special needs students touched on matters of public concern. Nonetheless, the appeals court noted that the teachers’ speech “resulted in school factions and disharmony among their co-workers and negatively impacted [the principal's] interest in efficiently administering the middle school.”
Conversely, in 1993 the Eleventh Circuit reached a different conclusion in the case of Belyeu v. Coosa County Board of Education. In this decision, a teacher’s aide alleged that school officials failed to rehire her because of a speech she made about racial issues at a PTA meeting. The aide said the school should adopt a program to commemorate Black History month. Immediately after the meeting, the principal asked to speak with her and told her he wished she had raised this issue privately rather than publicly. A lower court determined that the speech clearly touched on a matter of public concern, but that the school system’s interest in avoiding racial tensions outweighed the aide’s right to free speech. On appeal, however, the Eleventh Circuit reversed, writing that the aide’s “remarks did not disrupt the School System’s function by enhancing racial division, nor, based on the nature or context of her remarks, was her speech likely to do so.”
This is all a precursor to 2006, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively eliminated the free-speech rights of public employees in its 5-4 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. As my friend and former First Amendment Center colleague David Hudson explains, since Garcetti “public employers are able to defend themselves against allegations of retaliation by claiming that employees’ criticisms of government operations were made as part of their official duties.”
Indeed, a pattern has emerged in this post-Garcetti world, in which it has become almost impossible to mount a successful First Amendment lawsuit based on speech that relates to the workplace. In other words, a teacher who wishes to claim First Amendment protection for decisions about curricular content must do so knowing that the same protections s/he would be afforded as a private citizen will not apply to anything so directly related to his or her official duties.
Ironically, the 1969 case that is hailed as the high-water mark for student free-speech, Tinker v. Des Moines, features these lines: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.”
No longer.
(Postscript: If you’re a junkie for First Amendment law, check out my three books on the subject, including answers to all of the most frequently asked questions as they pertain to First Amendment issues in schools.)
Sam Chaltain is a DC-based educator and organizational change consultant. Previously, he was the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy, an education advocacy organization, and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 educators create more democratic learning communities. Sam spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-director of the First Amendment Schools program. He came to the Center from the public school system of New York City, where he taught high school English and History. Sam also spent four years teaching the same subjects at a private school in Brooklyn.
Sam’s writings about his work have appeared in both magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Education Week and USA Today. A periodic contributor to CNN and MSNBC, Sam is also the author or co-author of five books: The First Amendment in Schools (ASCD, 2003); First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights (Oxford University Press, 2006); American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free: Stories Of Free Expression in America (Oxford, 2011); and Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Defining Moments in Education (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
Free Speech for Teachers? Think Again . . .
by Sam Chaltain
Reprinted by permission from Democracy, Learning, Voice.
In case you missed it, there was a major case last week involving the First Amendment rights of teachers to make curricular content decisions. And the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling puts another nail in the coffin of the free-speech rights of public employees.
In the most recent case, an Ohio teacher’s contract was not renewed after controversy erupted over a few book assignments she made with her High School English class. As recently as a decade ago, the teacher may have had a legitimate chance in court (although not neccesarily). That’s because, prior to 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court evaluated public employee free-speech claims by using a test with two basic prongs. First, the court would determine whether the speech in question touches on a matter of public concern. If it did not, the teacher would receive no First Amendment protection whatsoever. If the speech did touch on a matter of public concern, the court would proceed to the balancing prong of the test, in which it would balance the teacher’s interest in commenting upon a matter of public concern against the school officials’ interest in promoting an efficient workplace of public service.
Prior to 2006, courts sometimes sided with school officials even though the public school teachers’ speech touched upon a matter of public concern. In one 2001 case, for example, the Eighth Circuit determined that a school principal did not violate the First Amendment rights of three teachers who were ordered to quit talking about the care and education of special needs students. Subsequent appeals in the case acknowledged that the teachers’ complaints about the lack of care for special needs students touched on matters of public concern. Nonetheless, the appeals court noted that the teachers’ speech “resulted in school factions and disharmony among their co-workers and negatively impacted [the principal's] interest in efficiently administering the middle school.”
Conversely, in 1993 the Eleventh Circuit reached a different conclusion in the case of Belyeu v. Coosa County Board of Education. In this decision, a teacher’s aide alleged that school officials failed to rehire her because of a speech she made about racial issues at a PTA meeting. The aide said the school should adopt a program to commemorate Black History month. Immediately after the meeting, the principal asked to speak with her and told her he wished she had raised this issue privately rather than publicly. A lower court determined that the speech clearly touched on a matter of public concern, but that the school system’s interest in avoiding racial tensions outweighed the aide’s right to free speech. On appeal, however, the Eleventh Circuit reversed, writing that the aide’s “remarks did not disrupt the School System’s function by enhancing racial division, nor, based on the nature or context of her remarks, was her speech likely to do so.”
This is all a precursor to 2006, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively eliminated the free-speech rights of public employees in its 5-4 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. As my friend and former First Amendment Center colleague David Hudson explains, since Garcetti “public employers are able to defend themselves against allegations of retaliation by claiming that employees’ criticisms of government operations were made as part of their official duties.”
Indeed, a pattern has emerged in this post-Garcetti world, in which it has become almost impossible to mount a successful First Amendment lawsuit based on speech that relates to the workplace. In other words, a teacher who wishes to claim First Amendment protection for decisions about curricular content must do so knowing that the same protections s/he would be afforded as a private citizen will not apply to anything so directly related to his or her official duties.
Ironically, the 1969 case that is hailed as the high-water mark for student free-speech, Tinker v. Des Moines, features these lines: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.”
No longer.
(Postscript: If you’re a junkie for First Amendment law, check out my three books on the subject, including answers to all of the most frequently asked questions as they pertain to First Amendment issues in schools.)
Sam Chaltain is a DC-based educator and organizational change consultant. Previously, he was the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy, an education advocacy organization, and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 educators create more democratic learning communities. Sam spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-director of the First Amendment Schools program. He came to the Center from the public school system of New York City, where he taught high school English and History. Sam also spent four years teaching the same subjects at a private school in Brooklyn.
Sam’s writings about his work have appeared in both magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Education Week and USA Today. A periodic contributor to CNN and MSNBC, Sam is also the author or co-author of five books: The First Amendment in Schools (ASCD, 2003); First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights (Oxford University Press, 2006); American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free: Stories Of Free Expression in America (Oxford, 2011); and Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Defining Moments in Education (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
Monday, November 23, 2009
New YouTube Clip Now Online! "School to Prison Pipeline"
In the excerpt below, ACLU staff attorney Rose Spidell discusses "The School to Prison Pipeline." This term describes a disturbing national trend in which school policies and practices are increasingly pushing students out of the public school and into the juvenile justice system. It refers to the current trend of criminalizing our students rather than educating them and the disproportionate effect it has on different student populations, especially, students of color. Spidell also describes some case studies out of Washington state. The excerpt is taken from the 2009 Annual Educational Law and Social Justice Forum held at Western Washington University on April 29th. The forum is an annual event sponsored by the Journal of Educational Controversy. Readers can view the entire forum on our journal's website.
View the full video of the forum here: http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/Forums.shtml
To learn more about "The School to Prison Pipeline," visit the ACLU's website here: http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/school-prison-pipeline-talking-points
View the full video of the forum here: http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/Forums.shtml
To learn more about "The School to Prison Pipeline," visit the ACLU's website here: http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/school-prison-pipeline-talking-points
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Supreme Court Decides Student Strip Search Case
The U.S. Supreme Court decision on the student strip search case was announced today. The ACLU , who represented April Redding, the mother of the Arizona student, Savana Redding, calls it the first victory for student rights in the last twenty years. The High Court ruled that the search that took place when honors student Savana was 13 years old was an unconstitutional violation of her rights. The search was done by school officials on the basis of an uncollaborated accusation by another student that Savanna had ibuprofen in her prosession. Now nineteen years old, Savanna wrote about her experience and her court victory on the ACLU blog today.
Read Savana's own words about her court victory from the ACLU blog:
Civics 101
by Savana Redding
"People of all ages expect to have the right to privacy in their homes, belongings, and most importantly, their persons. But for far too long, students have been losing these rights the moment they step foot onto public school property -- a lesson I learned firsthand when I was strip-searched by school officials just because another student who was in trouble pointed the finger at me. I do not believe that school officials should be allowed to strip-search kids in school, ever. And though the U.S. Supreme Court did not go quite so far, it did rule that my constitutional rights were violated when I was strip-searched based on nothing more than a classmate's uncorroborated accusation that I had given her ibuprofen. I'm happy for the decision and hope it helps make sure that no other kids will have to experience what I went through.
"Strip searches are a traumatic intrusion of privacy. Forcing children to remove their clothes for bodily inspection is not a tool that school officials should have at their disposal. Yet, until today, the law was apparently unclear, potentially allowing for the most invasive of searches based on the least of suspicions. Every day, parents caution their children about the importance of not talking to strangers, looking both ways before crossing the street, and following directions at school. But I imagine they never think to warn them that a school official, acting on a hunch, may force them to take their clothes off in the name of safety. And now, thankfully, they won't have to.
"Our fundamental rights are only as strong as the next generation believes them to be, and I am humbled to have had a part in preserving and promoting the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights."
Readers can read the U.S. Supreme Court decision here.
Editor: The journal recently published some articles on another student rights case, Morse v. Frederick, decided by the U.S Supreme Court in 2007. Readers can read two articles on the case in our Winter 2008 issue on "Schooling as if Democracy Matters."
Visions of Public Education In Morse v. Frederick by Aaron H. Caplan
"Bong Hits 4 Jesus”: Have students’ First Amendment rights to free speech been changed after Morse v. Frederick? by Nathan M. Roberts
(Cross-posted on the Social Issues Blog)
Read Savana's own words about her court victory from the ACLU blog:
Civics 101
by Savana Redding
"People of all ages expect to have the right to privacy in their homes, belongings, and most importantly, their persons. But for far too long, students have been losing these rights the moment they step foot onto public school property -- a lesson I learned firsthand when I was strip-searched by school officials just because another student who was in trouble pointed the finger at me. I do not believe that school officials should be allowed to strip-search kids in school, ever. And though the U.S. Supreme Court did not go quite so far, it did rule that my constitutional rights were violated when I was strip-searched based on nothing more than a classmate's uncorroborated accusation that I had given her ibuprofen. I'm happy for the decision and hope it helps make sure that no other kids will have to experience what I went through.
"Strip searches are a traumatic intrusion of privacy. Forcing children to remove their clothes for bodily inspection is not a tool that school officials should have at their disposal. Yet, until today, the law was apparently unclear, potentially allowing for the most invasive of searches based on the least of suspicions. Every day, parents caution their children about the importance of not talking to strangers, looking both ways before crossing the street, and following directions at school. But I imagine they never think to warn them that a school official, acting on a hunch, may force them to take their clothes off in the name of safety. And now, thankfully, they won't have to.
"Our fundamental rights are only as strong as the next generation believes them to be, and I am humbled to have had a part in preserving and promoting the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights."
Readers can read the U.S. Supreme Court decision here.
Editor: The journal recently published some articles on another student rights case, Morse v. Frederick, decided by the U.S Supreme Court in 2007. Readers can read two articles on the case in our Winter 2008 issue on "Schooling as if Democracy Matters."
Visions of Public Education In Morse v. Frederick by Aaron H. Caplan
"Bong Hits 4 Jesus”: Have students’ First Amendment rights to free speech been changed after Morse v. Frederick? by Nathan M. Roberts
(Cross-posted on the Social Issues Blog)
Monday, April 20, 2009
What was the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case all about?
We have posted our second teaser interview from our "Talking With the Authors" series on YouTube.
In it, ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan discusses the Morse v Frederick case, in which a student in Alaska held up a banner titled "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during the 2002 Olympic Torch Relay, and was subsequently suspended for 10 days.
Frederick, who argued that his right to free speech had been violated, took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 2007.
Go to the video on YouTube.
Caplan's original article, "Visions of Public Education in Morse v. Frederick," first appeared in our Winter 2008 issue, "Schooling as if Democracy Matters."
To view Caplan's full interview, visit: http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/AuthorsTalk.shtml
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)