The American Library Association (ALA) is the largest and oldest library association in the world. They pride themselves on being defenders of freedom of expression and censorship.
The problem is that for years they have refused to take a stance on the brutal incarceration of Cuban librarians who were jailed “because of their courageous insistence that the people of Cuba should also have the freedom to read books the dictatorship has banned.”
In 2004 Nat Hentoff first wrote of the of the hypocrisy in the Village Voice.
On the day in 2004 , at the ALA’s mid-winter meetings, when then President Carla Hayden said this:
“ALA and other library associations around the world have a long-standing commitment to intellectual freedom and access to information. It is a fundamental value that is near and dear to the hearts of all librarians, library workers, and library supporters. . . . ALA stands committed to the freedom to read freely.”
The ALA council overwhelmingly rejected an amendment proposed by council member Karen Schneider that called for Castro to free these prisoners of conscience and that it “is consistent with ALA policies, including ALA Policy 58.8, which affirms our support for Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression[,]’ . . . and especially [ALA Policy] 58.1 (2) . . .” to support human rights and intellectual freedom worldwide”
The vote was 177 to 5 against!
There is little doubt that the majority of the member librarians were for taking a stance on the Cuban situation unfortunately the brass wasn’t. Politics over principles.
Hentoff chimed in again this week with his op-ed that appeared in the Washington Times reminding everyone how the ALA “leadership abandons Cuba’s independent librarians whom Fidel Castro had locked into his gulags, under brutal conditions, because of their courageous insistence that the people of Cuba should also have the freedom to read books the dictatorship has banned.”
The ALA sent out a past president and chair of the International Relations Committee Maurice Freedman to respond. His letter to the editor of the right wing The American Thinker blog seems more political than principled and might show the true leanings of the ALA leadership which seems on this issue to be more toward the Bush administration and away from its constituents.
Where is current President Leslie Berger in all this. It is her we need to hear from. Putting a talking head out there can only do more harm than good in an already dire situation. The integrity of the Association is at stake. She needs to follow up her great EPA Library testimony before Congress with a courageous stand on the side of these suffering librarians.
Oh and in 1983 Hentoff received the prized ALA Immroth Award for Intellectual Freedom. The citation reads: “For courageous and articulate advocacy of the First Amendment as an author, speaker, and activist for human rights”. He has since renounced the honor and demanded to be removed from the list of recipients.
“I stand against any library or librarian anywhere in the world being imprisoned or punished in any way for the books they circulate…plead with Castro and his government to immediately take their hands off the independent librarians in prison, and to send them back into Cuban culture to inform the people” Ray Bradbury author of Fahrenheit 451.
book burning tactics undertaken by Castro and the Cuban Government.
List of books known to be burned in Cuba in 2003
ALA’s official book burning web page with no mention of the documented Cuban burnings
Interview with Gisela Delgado, executive director of the Independent Libraries Project of Cuba
Image of North Korean Book Burning from Freadom