City of Boulder Releases Its First Tribal History Report; City of Boulder, June 2, 2026

 City of Boulder; City of Boulder Releases Its First Tribal History Report

"The City of Boulder is pleased to announce the release of the first part of its Tribal ethnographic-education report documenting Indigenous history and cultural connections to the Boulder Valley, now available on the city website. This report marks a significant milestone in Boulder's ongoing commitment to honoring Indigenous history and fostering a more inclusive, historically grounded community.

The report documents the cultural, historical, and ecological connections of Tribal Nations to the Boulder Valley. By centering Tribal perspectives, it provides guidance for education, land stewardship, public interpretation, and community engagement — integrating Indigenous knowledge into the contemporary management of Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) lands. It also seeks to strengthen collaborative partnerships and advance efforts to incorporate Indigenous knowledge systems into environmental management, education, and policy.

“This work represents more than research or documentation — it reflects living histories, enduring cultures, and the ongoing presence of Indigenous Peoples whose connections to this land long predate the City of Boulder and continue today,” said Boulder City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde. “We are deeply grateful to the Tribal Nations, elders, and knowledge holders who chose to share their stories, perspectives, and wisdom. This report is a gift, and we receive it with respect and responsibility.” 

Developed in partnership with Tribal Nations, the report is part of a continuing collaboration with the City of Boulder that began in the 1990s, renewed through the 2016 Indigenous Peoples' Day Resolution and subsequent consultations. Grounded in the City-Tribal Memorandum of Understanding, it provides accurate, respectful educational content about each Tribe's history in Boulder and Jefferson Counties and is intended as a resource for city staff and the community at large.

This work was led by Living Heritage Anthropology, LLC (LHA), a woman-owned small business specializing in ethnographic research and Tribal consultation. LHA's Community-Based Participatory Research approach ensures Tribal voices and goals are central to every stage of the process. Additional reports representing more Tribes who share a history in the Boulder Valley are forthcoming.

Read the report and learn more about the city's Tribal consultation work on the city website."

ESSAY: Home of the brave? Really? Who will stand up for democracy?; The Ink, February 18, 2025

 ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink ; ESSAY: Home of the brave? Really? Who will stand up for democracy?

"As I write this, there are scattered and inspiring examples of bravery all around us — prosecutors, judges, even the occasional lawmaker. But in the main, we are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are not the home of the brave. We are a country full of people smilingly capitulating to a tyrant...

Collaborating. Exactly that. It is fashionable now. Bravery, less so.

It’s the media owners who are rejecting advertisements from the pro-democracy movement and letting go of cartoonists who challenge power and settling bogus lawsuits to protect their wider commercial interests, and trying to position themselves in the Dear Leader’s good graces. Why do they even own newspapers? Maybe they would be better off owning banks. Do they know what newspapers are for?...

Then there are the CEOs, who, five years ago, proudly positioned themselves as avatars of a new future of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and now purge those programs from their own companies. They have more power with the resources at their command than most people who have ever lived, but it is not enough to give them courage. They would sell out their own colleagues, make them feel less part of the team, in order to please a Dear Leader who would sell them out in a Wall Street second...

It is the university leaders who, instead of defending their faculty — one of the only bastions of protected thinkers who can actually tell the truth without fear because of tenure — are bending over backwards to please the wannabe autocrat. Campuses are now full of fear of a new McCarthyism. How does it feel to work for leaders who do not have your back?

Collaborating.

We are learning about ourselves as a country. We are learning who among us and around us is brave."

Folks Are Uniting Against Book Bans; Word In Black via Michigan Chronicle, October 7, 2024

 Word In Black via Michigan Chronicle, Aziah Siid; Folks Are Uniting Against Book Bans

"Mychal Threets, a Black librarian and literary activist with a social media following rivaling that of any influencer, has a message for readers struggling to find themselves on shelves due to conservative-led book bans in public schools and libraries: You have the power to fight back.

“You belong in books, in libraries, in the world, just as you are. You have the freedom to read, to be in books, to see yourselves,” Threets says in a recent Instagram post about why he’s supporting the Freedom to Read Community Day of Action on October 19.

Threets created the post to announce his partnership with the New York Public Library on the Freedom to Read Community Day of Action campaign, an effort to encourage collective action and civic pushback against banning or restricting access to books written by, for, or about people from diverse communities.

The day is a national initiative from the American Library Association and its Unite Against Book Bans campaign, in partnership with Brooklyn, Queens and New York Public Libraries, and the Association for Rural and Small Libraries. The joint effort was started “in response to the wave of book banning and censorship that started gathering momentum in 2020,” according to a press release from the ALA...

Host Your Own Day of Action, But Be Careful

A free event guide and promotion kit walks folks who cares about the issue through how to host their own local Freedom to Read Community Day of Action on Oct. 19. It suggests everything from being ready to answer common questions about book banning to “inviting local community leaders, authors, librarians, or educators who want to share personal stories,” about what books mean to them.

However, given the vitriol against books by Black and other racially or ethnically diverse authors — and against books about Black history — it’s also suggested that folks take some safety precautions ahead of any scheduled events.

Precautions include monitoring social media and emails for threats or protests and inspecting areas around event venues for suspicious people or items. Restricting access to only those authorized to attend or celebrate the event is also recommended.

But if Mychal the Librarian can get the courage to show up to the day of action at the New York Public Library, the rest of us can, too. As Threets says in his Instagram video, “It is all about the freedom to read.”"

Chicago Public Library Debuts Initiative Offering Ebooks to the City’s Visitors During Special Events; Library Journal, August 23, 2024

 Matt Enis, Library Journal; Chicago Public Library Debuts Initiative Offering Ebooks to the City’s Visitors During Special Events

"“Access to knowledge and information is the foundation of a thriving, equitable, and democratic city,” Mayor Johnson said in an announcement. “Thanks to Chicago Public Library and our dedicated librarians, we’re making this powerful initiative possible, ensuring that everyone in Chicago has the opportunity to learn, grow, and connect through universal access to literature.”" 

Books under attack, then and now; MIT News, October 26, 2023

 Brigham Fay | MIT Libraries, MIT News; Books under attack, then and now

"Richard Ovenden was dressed appropriately for the start of Banned Books Week. He proudly displayed the American Library Association’s “Free people read freely” T-shirt as he approached the podium at Hayden Library on Oct. 2. Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian at the University of Oxford, spoke about the willful destruction of recorded knowledge for an event titled “Book Wars,” the inaugural event in a new series called Conversations on Academic Freedom and Expression (CAFE), a collaboration between the MIT Libraries and History at MIT. 

“The idea for CAFE is to introduce the MIT community to the broader landscape of what’s going on in the world of academic freedom and free expression, beyond some of our local exchanges,” says Malick Ghachem, history professor and department head and a member of MIT’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Free Expression. 

“The libraries were a natural partner for the CAFE series,” says Chris Bourg, director of MIT Libraries. “The value of free and open access to information underpins everything we do.” 

Ovenden, who writes extensively on libraries, archives, and information management, is the author of “Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge,” which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2021. In his MIT talk he provided a historical overview of attacks on libraries — from the library of Ashurbanipal in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh (now northern Iraq), destroyed by fire in 612 BC, to book burning under the Nazi regime to current efforts across the United States to remove or restrict access to books.

In spite of this history of loss, Ovenden finds hope in “the human impulse to preserve, to pass on, to bear witness, to allow for diverse ideas to thrive.” He detailed the extraordinary actions people have taken to save knowledge, citing the “Paper Brigade,” a forced labor unit of poets and intellectuals in Nazi-occupied Vilnius who smuggled and hid rare books and manuscripts, and the tragic death of Aida Buturovic, a 32-year-old librarian who was killed as she tried to rescue books during the 1992 assault on the National and University Library in Sarajevo.

Ovenden concluded by making the case that libraries and archives are the infrastructure for democracy — institutions dedicated not only to education, but to safeguarding the rights of citizens, providing reference points for facts and truth, preserving identity, and enabling a diversity of views. Despite millennia of attacks, libraries continue to fight back, most recently with public libraries expanding digital access to combat book bans nationwide. 

Following Ovenden’s talk, Ghachem led a discussion and audience Q&A that touched on the connections between book bans and so-called “cancel culture,” how censorship itself is used as a means of expressing political views, and growing distrust of expertise.  

The CAFE series is one of several opportunities to engage the Institute community that emerged from the Report of the MIT Ad Hoc Working Group on Free Expression. Ghachem also started a new first-year advising seminar, “Free Expression, Pluralism, and the University,” and the Institute Community and Equity Office launched Dialogues Across Difference: Building Community at MIT. A second CAFE event is being planned for the spring term. 

“At this moment in our history, we should try to encourage discussion, and not debate,” said Ovenden. “We must try to move away from this idea that it’s a contest, that it’s a battle, and encourage and foster the idea of listening and discussion. And that's all part of the deliberation that I think is necessary for a healthy society.”"

Mark Cuban Pledges $1 Million To Dallas Police For LGBT Efforts; Huffington Post, 6/22/16

Curtis M. Wong, Huffington Post; Mark Cuban Pledges $1 Million To Dallas Police For LGBT Efforts:

"Mark Cuban has responded to the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida in a very big way.

In the wake of the tragedy, the billionaire businessman and owner of the Dallas Mavericks will donate $1 million to the Dallas police department in an effort to better protect the city’s LGBT community, CNN reports. The donation will be used to fund additional patrols in Dallas’s Oak Lawn neighborhood, which boasts a sizable LGBT community, as well as an estimated an estimated 16,000 hours of overtime for officers to enhance counter-terrorism efforts across the city.

In a press release, the 57-year-old entrepreneur stated that he was “proud to be able to help the city of Dallas.”

Meanwhile, Dallas Police Chief David Brown praised the effort, vowing to “earmark and track the expenditure of these funds to ensure its effective use in creating a safe environment” for the city’s LGBT residents.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings echoed those sentiments, praising Cuban as “a man of action.”"

Over 50 and Back in College, Preparing for a New Career; New York Times, 4/3/15

Kerry Hannon, New York Times; Over 50 and Back in College, Preparing for a New Career:

"In March, deans, provosts and vice presidents from 22 institutions, including Arizona State University, Columbia University, Community College of Vermont, Cornell University, Denison University, Tulane University, U.C.L.A. and the University of Washington, held a daylong summit at New York University to discuss future curriculums and collaborations. Their mission was to work together on ways to create intergenerational, age-friendly institutions and build a network to help students like Ms. White and others who want to reboot to service-oriented work.

Among the challenges are how to provide courses for those in an aging population who lack the time or financial resources for full-blown degree-based programs. One idea was to offer older students college credits for work and life experience as a way to reduce the number of classes needed for a degree."