Greg Landgraf , American Libraries; What Gives Carla Hayden Hope
"The discussion concluded with a series of rapid-fire questions, one of which inadvertently demonstrated the folly of opposing diversity. Alexander asked Hayden about what food she doesn’t like. She responded immediately, “Brussels sprouts.” Alexander—a fan of the sprouts—was surprised. Hayden declared, “Just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean that you can’t eat them. Diversity is just having choices.”"
Emily Neil, WHYY ; Carla Hayden, former Librarian of Congress, speaks on her dismissal, the future of libraries at Philadelphia event
"Former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden spoke at the Free Library of Philadelphia Parkway Central Branch on Saturday night, where she sat down for a fireside chat with Ashley Jordan, president and CEO of the African American Museum in Philadelphia...
In his introductory remarks, Kelly Richards, president and director of the Free Library of Philadelphia, said that Hayden has always been a “tireless advocate” for the library systems throughout her career. He said libraries are not just “repositories of knowledge” in a democratic society, but “vibrant centers of community life, education and inclusion.”
“Libraries have a reputation for being a quiet place, but not tonight,” Richards said, as audience members gave Hayden and Jordan a standing ovation when they entered the stage."
, The New York Times ; What the University of Virginia Should Have Done
"According to The Times, Mr. Ryan’s departure was prompted by “demands by the Trump administration that he step aside to help resolve a Justice Department inquiry into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.” The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has been investigating the university for its alleged failure to eliminate D.E.I. programs and continuing to consider race and ethnicity in various programs and scholarships.
I served as university counsel at the University of Virginia from 2018 through 2022. During that time, it was my job to defend the university from unfounded allegations and investigations. The Justice Department has alleged that the university’s actions violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Had I been university counsel last week, I would have advised my client to challenge what I believe to be a false allegation that the university’s policies are unlawful...
Mr. Ryan was known to urge the university to be both “great and good” in all its endeavors. His departure will result in a less inclusive university community, which will harm all students who choose the University of Virginia. It is a sad day for the university, which will suffer the consequences of this bad decision."
Marina Dunbar , The Guardian; Trump sent ‘explicit’ threat to cut funds from University of Virginia, senator says
"The University of Virginia (UVA) received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator.
During an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator for Virginia, defended Ryan – who had championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted that Donald Trump will similarly target other universities.
Warner said he understood that the former UVA president was told that if he “tried to fight back, hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld”.
“There was indication that they received the letter that if he didn’t resign on a day last week, by 5 o’clock, all these cuts would take place,” Warner added. He also said he believes this to be the “most outrageous action” that the Trump administration has taken on education since it retook office in January.
Ryan resigned from his position as UVA president on Friday. He was facing political pressure from Washington to step aside in order to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, the New York Times reported on the same day.
“I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” Ryan said in his resignation message to the university community. He expressed an unwillingness to risk the employment of other staff, as well as cuts to funding and financial aid for students.
Ryan had a reputation for trying to make the UVA campus more diverse and encouraging students to perform community service. He had served as the university’s president since 2018."
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
A computer science conference with a cross-disciplinary focus that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems.
"Algorithmic systems are being adopted in a growing number of contexts, fueled by big data. These systems filter, sort, score, recommend, personalize, and otherwise shape human experience, increasingly making or informing decisions with major impact on access to, e.g., credit, insurance, healthcare, parole, social security, and immigration. Although these systems may bring myriad benefits, they also contain inherent risks, such as codifying and entrenching biases; reducing accountability, and hindering due process; they also increase the information asymmetry between individuals whose data feed into these systems and big players capable of inferring potentially relevant information.
ACM FAccT is an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to bringing together a diverse community of scholars from computer science, law, social sciences, and humanities to investigate and tackle issues in this emerging area. Research challenges are not limited to technological solutions regarding potential bias, but include the question of whether decisions should be outsourced to data- and code-driven computing systems. We particularly seek to evaluate technical solutions with respect to existing problems, reflecting upon their benefits and risks; to address pivotal questions about economic incentive structures, perverse implications, distribution of power, and redistribution of welfare; and to ground research on fairness, accountability, and transparency in existing legal requirements."
Gates Cambridge; Global South voices ‘marginalised in AI Ethics’
"A Gates Cambridge Scholar is first author of a paper how AI Ethics is sidelining Global South voices, reinforcing marginalisation.
The study, Distributive Epistemic Injustice in AI Ethics: A Co-productionist Account of Global North-South Politics in Knowledge Production, was published by the Association for Computing Machinery and is based on a study of nearly 6,000 AI Ethics publications between 1960 and 2024. Its first author is Abdullah Hasan Safir [2024 – pictured above], who is doing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Design. Other co-authors include Gates Cambridge Scholars Ramit Debnath[2018] and Kerry McInerney [2017].
The findings were recently presented at the ACM’s FAccT conference, considered one of the top AI Ethics conferences in the world. They show that experts from the Global North currently legitimise their expertise in AI Ethics through dynamic citational and collaborative practices in knowledge production within the field, including co-citation and institutional of AI Ethics."
, The New Republic ; UVA President James Ryan Caved to MAGA—and They Forced Him Out Anyway
[Kip Currier: Capitulation to Trump almost never gives people and organizations what they think or hope it will. For examples, just look to the craven law firms that have debased themselves and are paying the price for submission.
The forcing out of UVA President James Ryan is just another step in what Trump et al have planned for higher education.]
[Excerpt]
"Thomas Jefferson’s vision for a noble and educated republic has been dealt a firm blow. The enemies of free and open inquiry, of science, and of informed, democratic citizenship have chopped off the head of the very university Jefferson founded to make his vision real.
On Friday, the Trump administration, aided by a board appointed entirely by Republican Governor Glenn Younkin, forced University of Virginia President James Ryan to resign. The Justice Department had threatened to block all federal funds to the second-oldest public university in the country if Ryan remained in office.
Ryan and the board had eliminated all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in March, even though the specious executive order commanding such changes was already under challenge by the courts. The university chose to comply rather than fight.
But, in a turn that Franz Kafka would appreciate (and perhaps inspired), the Trump administration declared that capitulation insufficient. In a clumsily worded letter to the university sent in April, the Department of Justice claimed that it had “received complaints that [Ryan’s] office and the University may have failed to implement these directives and further that you have refused to produce the report on the matter.”...
To this day, no one at the university has a clear idea what the university could or should have done. The New York Times reported Thursday that the only specific move the Justice Department demanded in recent weeks was Ryan’s resignation.
Laying the attack on the University of Virginia on DEI was brilliant and maddening. What, exactly, is DEI? Those of us who work in universities have a good idea. It is the collection of efforts and programs that allow students who have served in the military, do not come from homes that have had college students before, graduated from high schools deep in the coal fields of Appalachia, arrived on student visas from Nigeria, have endured sexual violence or harassment, or occupy segments of society that are constantly under attack from the majority to succeed and graduate. They are not zero-sum programs. They do not deny anyone else an opportunity to attend a university or thrive at one.
DEI programs recognize that society and the world are complex, diverse places."
Edward Helmore, The Guardian ; Hegseth announces new name of US navy ship that honored gay rights icon Harvey Milk
[Kip Currier: The money quote in this Guardian article is Pete Hegseth's statement that:
“People want to be proud of the ship they are sailing in."
It's an intentionally offensive statement against gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk. It's also a coded slur meant to troll LGBTQ+ people -- delivered at the tail end of Pride Month -- by suggesting which vessel names inspire feelings of pride and which do not.
Recall, too, that Hegseth kicked off June and Pride Month by announcing he would be renaming naval vessels that had been given the names of historical figures and civil rights activists, several of whom were veterans, like Harvey Milk, Cesar Chavez, and Medgar Evers.]
[Excerpt]
"The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has formally announced that the US navy supply vessel named in honor of the gay rights activist Harvey Milk is to be renamed after Oscar V Peterson, a chief petty officer who received the congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the Battle of the Coral Sea in the second world war.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming,” Hegseth announced on Friday on X.
In an accompanying video-statement, Hegseth added: “We are not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration. Instead, we are renaming the ship after a congressional Medal of Honor recipient.”
“People want to be proud of the ship they are sailing in,” Hegseth added."
Lauren Triola , Medium; How IMLS Funding Cuts Will Impact Prison Libraries
"With the recent chaos surrounding the future of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), people are concerned about libraries around the country losing vital government funding. Most of the uproar against the proposed cuts has centered on how important public libraries are to their communities. However, there’s another type of library that will also be affected by these funding cuts — one that is indispensable to the community it serves.
Prison libraries are a lifeline to many people who are incarcerated. They depend heavily on IMLS grants, and if IMLS is dismantled or suffers severe funding cuts, then prison libraries will struggle to exist."
Bryce Edgmon and , The New York Times ; Alaska Cannot Survive This Bill
"The likely impacts from the “big, beautiful bill” are particularly ugly for our home state, Alaska: Nearly 40,000 Alaskans could lose health care coverage, thousands of families will go hungry through loss of benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the shift in costs from the federal government to the state will plunge our budget into a severe deficit, cripple our state economy and make it harder to provide basic services.
This is not about partisanship. One of us is a Republican and the other is an independent. In the Alaska Legislature, our State Senate and House are led by a bipartisan governing coalition. Our focus is squarely on the survival of the people we represent.
The benefits of Medicaid and the SNAP program permeate the entire fabric of the Alaska economy, with one in three Alaskans receiving Medicaid, including more than half of the children. In remote Arctic communities, Medicaid dollars make medical travel possible for residents from the hundreds of roadless villages to the communities where they are able to receive proper medical treatments...
Alaska cannot afford to lose health care funding. Our state is near the top of the list for the highest rates of suicide, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections in the nation. It is also severely lacking in adequate behavioral health services. The cuts will only make these problems worse.
Work requirements instituted in Medicaid are untenable for rural Alaska, with many communities facing limited broadband access and job opportunities. Alaskans who lose health care coverage will be forced to delay care until it’s an emergency."
Ashley Oliver , Fox News ; Supreme Court decides whether to allow parents to shield children from LGBTQ books in school
"The Supreme Court held Friday that a group of Maryland parents are entitled to opt their children out of school lessons that could violate their beliefs in a case centered on religious freedom.
The justices decided 6-3 along ideological lines in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents can exclude their children from a Maryland public school system's lessons that contain themes about homosexuality and transgenderism if they feel it conflicts with their religious faith."
"The University of Cincinnati shuttered its diversity, equity and inclusion programs June 24 in response to a Republican-led change in Ohio law that banned such programs and threatened to withhold money from schools that fail to comply, our partners at the Cincinnati Enquirer report.
In an email to students and faculty, UC President Neville Pinto said the university will close its Equity and Inclusion Office, its LGBTQ Center, its Women’s Center and four Identity Centers that offer programs supporting diverse student populations. UC also will rename the African American Cultural & Resource Center the “Cultural Center.”
Pinto said he recognized the changes would be difficult for many UC students who relied on the centers and programs for academic and peer support. Some students have described the programs as essential to their college experience because they offered a sense of belonging to minority and LGBTQ students who might otherwise feel isolated.
“I recognize that unwinding deeply rooted efforts around inclusion will undoubtedly challenge core feelings of belonging for many in our community,” Pinto wrote. “My message to you is unequivocal: You belong here.”"
Eric Katz, Government Executive; ‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage
In the responses submitted by visitors to National Park Service sites, however, which were obtained by Government Executive, no single submission pointed to any such examples. Instead, in the nearly 200 submissions NPS received in the first days since the solicitations were posted, visitors implored the administration not to erase U.S. history and praised agency staff for improving their experiences.
The new request at NPS and other Interior Department sites followed an executive order from President Trump dubbed “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that called for federal lands to remove information that could “improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.” That in turn led to an order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that department staff solicit public feedback to flag “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” The reviews should include exhibits, brochures, films, waysides and signs, the secretary said.
In instructions to staff also obtained by Government Executive, NPS employees were told to review feedback from visitors weekly but not yet remove any materials. For each comment, staff can either mark it as received but not requiring action, requiring action but not related to the signage issue or flagged for review by NPS leadership in Washington. Parks will receive follow up information in August.
In the meantime, NPS said, the agency’s Harpers Ferry Center is currently “developing standard protocols and templates to assist with expedited removal, covering, or temporary replacement of any media that does not comply with” Burgum's order. It added a “long-term plan for permanent replacement is also under development for affected media.”
So far, NPS is not getting the help it was hoping for from those scanning the QR codes now posted around park sites soliciting assistance in identifying language in violation of Trump and Burgum’s orders. Instead, visitors accused the Trump administration of seeking to erase the nation’s history.
“There shouldn't be signs about history that whitewash and erase the centuries of discrimination against the people who have cared for this land for generations,” a visitor to Indian Dunes National Park said.
A visitor to Independence Hall in Philadelphia called the new signs “censorship dressed up as customer service.”
“What upset me the most about the museum—more than anything in the actual exhibits—were the signs telling people to report anything they thought was negative about Americans,” the visitor said. “That isn't just frustrating, it's outrageous. It felt like an open invitation to police and attack historians for simply doing their jobs: telling the truth.”
Several visitors to the Stonewall National Monument in New York lamented changes there the park’s website that removed mention of transgender individuals in the Stonewall Uprising.
“Put them back,” the visitor said. “Honor them. There would be no Stonewall without trans people.”
A visitor at Yellowstone National Park said the information presented there should challenge people.
“The executive order to asking for feedback is ****,” the message read. “Parks already do an amazing job telling stories that contain hard truths and everyone is entitled to the truth to make better decisions in our lives. So what if people feel bad?”
Without factual information, the person added, “everything is just a pretty facade with no real substance.”
At Manzanar National Historical Site, one of the internment camps that held Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans during World War II, a visitor said the site existed to present information about the costly errors in U.S. history.
“The entire purpose of parks like this one is to learn from the mistakes of the past so we can avoid repeating them,” the visitor said. “Please do not water down the reality of the experience for future visitors.”
A visitor at the Natchez National Historical Park had a similar takeaway.
“Slavery was a dark time in our history and we need to come to terms with that,” the individual said, “not gloss it over and romanticize the Antebellum South.”
Only one visitor—at Petersburg National Battlefield, a Civil War site—noted they read signs that “didn’t sit right,” though the individual did not specify any materials that needed changing. Instead, the person requested a “second look” to potentially identify “more balance.” A Grand Canyon National Park visitor said the site should change its signs, but added “signed, Elon,” suggesting the comment was left in jest.
Many of the comments asked NPS to include more information that highlighted the U.S. government’s discriminatory practices toward Native Americans. A bevy of visitors also asked for increased staffing and complimented the steps existing employees took to improve their experiences.
Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, called the directive requiring park staff to post the new signs with accompanying QR codes “an outrage” that shows the “deep contempt for their work to preserve and tell American stories.”
“If our country erases the darker chapters of our history, we will never learn from our mistakes,” Pierno said. “These signs must come down immediately.”
An Interior Department spokesperson said in response to a request for comment that leaks “will not be tolerated.”
“It is a true shame that employees are spending their time leaking to the media instead of doing work for the American people, the spokesperson said. “The same American people who fund their paychecks.”
Trump, in his executive order, said federal lands should display materials that amplify American greatness.
ark materials should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape,” Trump said.
The Independence Hall visitor suggested that line of thinking would not effect the desired result.
“Putting up signs like that doesn't protect anyone, [it] just tells visitors that the truth is a problem,” the visitor said. “And I can't think of anything more offensive than that.”"
Riley Phillips, FirstCoastNews; Pierce County, GA library manager fired following book display including book about trans boy
"A longtime employee of the library in Pierce County, Georgia has been fired after a controversial book display including a book about a transgender boy.
Lavonnia Moore was the library manager at the Pierce County Library. Her sister, Alicia Moore, spoke with First Coast News Friday. She said Lavonnia’s dreams were shattered Wednesday when she was fired from her position because of a book in a summer reading display...
Alicia said Lavonnia had been with the library system for 15 years and worked her way up from part-time clerk to library manager.
She explained the book that led to her firing is called When Aiden Became a Brother, a story of a transgender boy preparing for the birth of a new sibling.
The book drew sharp criticism from a community group called Alliance for Faith and Family, the same group that fought for the removal of a mural in the Waycross-Ware County Public Library. The group posted on social media urging people to reach out to the library system and county commissioners...
The book’s author Kyle Lukoff also weighed in. He told First Coast News he received a message about the librarian. He said "the story itself says everything I want it to, which is that trans people are a blessing," and encouraged people to read the book."
Audra D. S. Burch , The New York Times; Enslaved Black Children Were Educated Here. Now the Public Can Learn the History.
"Since the discovery, the Bray School has been fully restored. It will open to the public on Thursday — Juneteenth — in Colonial Williamsburg, where it was relocated in 2023 to be preserved. The space will give visitors a sense of the lives of the students, and the museum will scrutinize, through interpreters, the mission of the school, which not only taught the children church doctrine and reading but sought to “convince enslaved students to accept their circumstances as divinely ordained,” according to the museum’s website.
The opening of the school comes at a particularly fraught time in the United States as Black history, diversity and established historical narratives are being challenged, sanitized or even erased. Its story also unlocks another layer of the historic city, whose identity is shaped, in part, by its role in the American Revolution. Located in the coastal Tidewater region, Williamsburg was once the capital of the British colony of Virginia. The city is a unique place to examine colonial life — including slavery — and the nation’s founding ideals...
“I always knew there were pieces missing from the story of Blacks here in Williamsburg,” said Janice Canaday, who traces her family to Elisha and Mary Jones, who attended the Bray School in 1762 as free students. Ms. Canaday works as Colonial Williamsburg’s African American community engagement manager, and said she often thought about the children. “I wonder what songs they sang.” she said, “Did they go home, wherever home was, and share what they learned? Did they look out the window and somehow see hope?”...
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which owns and operates the museum, has been accused of both presenting a whitewashed version of the colonial period and of going “woke” by making the 18th-century storytelling more inclusive."
JUDY KURTZ , The Hill; Bill Clinton says he wondered if Trump administration might try to ban his latest book
"“Maya Angelou, who read the inaugural poem at my first inauguration — wrote it, and read it and was a great human being — the first thing the White House did was to ban her book, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,'” Clinton recalled.
Angelou’s 1969 autobiography was reportedly one of nearly 400 books that was pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy library in April as part of an effort to remove titles containing diversity, equity and inclusion content.
Calling it a “magnificent book,” Clinton reflected on Angelou’s personal story about a child who “loses the ability to speak for a couple of years because she was abused, and then she blooms.”
“I couldn’t figure out why that was a problem,” Clinton said.
“I don’t like book banning,” the 42nd president added.
“I wasn’t ever for banning books that were full of things they said about me that weren’t true,” Clinton said.
“It never occurred to me that I should stop you from reading them.”"
Andrea Asuaje, WGBH; Unbound Pages: Authors Against Book Bans fights for the freedom to read
"Thousands of books are facing scrutiny throughout the country as the book-banning movement continues to gain support, from Florida, to Wisconsin and even New Hampshire. Now, hundreds of authors are using their voices off the page to spread awareness about the effect book bans have on democracy and free speech.
The organization Authors Against Book Bans (AABB), which was formed in 2024, is focused on the freedom to read and composed of authors from all genres who write for readers of all ages. Many of the members have had their work challenged or banned, like AABB board member, Adib Khorram, author of several books including the often-challenged or banned “Darius The Great Is Not Okay.” The book and its sequel, “Darius The Great Deserves Better,” have come under fire for addressing race, sexuality and, according to Khorram, Marxist ideology."
Clare Mulroy , USA TODAY; Trump administration could change the way we read, from book bans to author talks
"Hazelwood's tour snag sparked a discussion on book communities about how President Donald Trump's recent policies would trickle down to publishing. Amid book banning, border policies, new anti-DEI sentiments and federal library grant cuts, these are the ways the new administration may impact readers.
, Carolina Public Press ; Last-ditch legal effort tries to halt NC regional library system breakup over LGBTQ+ content
"Local debates capture national attention
The heated debate in Yancey is just one more example of a larger national trend: the transformation of public schools and libraries into political battlefields.
John Chrastka is executive director at EveryLibrary, a self-described “non-partisan, pro-library” political advocacy organization. He told CPP that the emergence of social conservative groups seeking to limit materials in public libraries has led to policy changes at both the state and local level. Sometimes, he said, the best means of pushing back is through the courts.
“Sometimes (court) is the only place that you can go, because you can organize all day long locally and the politicians and the political actors won’t listen because they’re not in for the rule of law,” Chrastka said.
First Amendment challenges are common in these library disputes, but Chrastka said an often underlooked litigation strategy is through a civil rights lens.
Federal law dictates that all people are entitled to “equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages and accommodations of any place of public accommodation.” Public libraries, being taxpayer-funded institutions, are considered places of public accommodation.
“So many of the book bans, so many of the challenges to displays, so many fights over what kind of programming is done in the libraries is based on the comfort of the majority,” Chrastka said.
“If the majority population isn’t comfortable with a minority population — whether it’s race or gender or sexuality or religion, we see these fights. The relevance of a program, the relevance of a display, the relevance of a title to a minority population should be considered in that civil rights framework.”"
Geoff Bennett , PBS News; Carla Hayden on her time as a pioneering librarian of Congress and getting fired by Trump
"Geoff Bennett: What effect do you believe censorship has on our democracy?
Dr. Carla Hayden:
As Alberto Manguel said, as centuries of dictators, tyrants, slave owners and other illicit holders of power have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule. And if you cannot restrict a people from learning to read, you must limit its scope.
And that is the danger of making sure that people don't have access.
Geoff Bennett:
She says she will keep advocating for her beliefs and feels bolstered by support from elected officials on both sides of the aisle, as well as from people across the country.
She shared that her 93-year-old mother has been cataloging the notes and messages she's received. A former president of the American Library Association, Hayden is set to address some of its 50,000 members at their annual meeting. This year's agenda, she says, takes on new urgency.
Dr. Carla Hayden:
How to help communities support their libraries, how to deal with personal attacks that libraries are having, even death threats in some communities for libraries.
So this convening of librarians that are in schools, universities, public libraries will be really our rally. We have been called feisty fighters for freedom."
