Nat Hentoff expands on his earlier reaction to the American Library Association's hypocritical refusal to condemn Fidel Castro's imprisonment of former independent librarians in Cuba, and takes a personal stand in protest.
Karen Schneider, a member of the governing council, proposed an amendment to the section of the final report on the proceedings of the mid-winter meeting that concerned Castro's imprisonment of the librarians along with 65 other independent journalists and human rights workers. She said, "In calling for the release of the people arrested in [Castro's] March 2003 crackdown, we join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, President Jimmy Carter, journalist Nat Hentoff (recipient of the 1983 ALA Immroth [Intellectual Freedom] award), and other organizations and individuals who champion free speech everywhere."Posted by Alan at January 30, 2004 12:03 AMIn her amendment, Karen Schneider emphasized that demanding Castro free these prisoners of conscience "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.' "
And this is how the vote went down on Schneider's amendment to free the prisoners, some of whom are of an age that makes it likely that, unless liberated, they will die in the gulag for the crime of thinking and acting as free individuals in a dictatorship.
Karen Schneider's amendment was overwhelmingly voted down by the 182-member ALA council. Only about five hands were raised to support it. Next week, I will report on praise from a high Cuban official for the ALA's rejection of the Schneider amendment.
So much for the ALA leadership's devotion to "free speech everywhere."
It is the leadership I accuse of hypocrisy, of being whited sepulchres. As a reporter on intellectual-freedom issues, I have known and respected many librarians around the country as they fought, sometimes in peril of their jobs, against censorship by local politicians, library boards, and right-wing and left-wing politically correct pressure groups.
It is hard for me to believe that the majority of rank-and-file librarians agree with the spinelessness of their governing council, which couldn't bring itself to ask the luminous Fidel Castro to let these people go.
Karen Schneider, in her scorned amendment to the final report, mentioned my support of her amendment, and that I had 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" (June 1983).
I now publicly renounce the Immroth Award and demand that the American Library Association remove me from the list of recipients of that honor. To me, it is no longer an honor. Someone I know in the ALA, who was at the San Diego meeting, explained to me that some members of the council whispered privately that they agreed with the amendment calling for freeing the librarians but had to vote it down because they didn't want to be vilified as being "on the wrong team." They have put themselves in their own prison.
Via the Village Voice
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