Here's some well-deserved negative publicity for the see-no-evil leadership of the American Library Association, who refuse to speak up for persecuted dissident librarians in dictatorial Cuba: a slapping in the Chronicle of Higher Education (lifespan of link unknown). That's interesting, since the Chronicle pretty well represents the conventional wisdom in academia and one would expect more empathy for the ALA lefties.
Despite vehement protests from some of its members, the ALA has refrained from defending the independent librarians. Association officials argue that the Cuban movement -- whose leaders they describe as "so-called librarians" -- is more political than scholarly....Members of the Cuban movement acknowledge that they are not trained librarians. But that, they say, should not stop the association from supporting their efforts to reduce censorship.
"It's true that every independent librarian is a dissident," Elizardo Sánchez, one of Cuba's leading dissidents and an independent librarian in Havana, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "The fact that someone decides to have books and lend them to his neighbors is for the government a 'counterrevolutionary act.'"
Tip via Jack Stephens at Conservator.
See also: Tawdry is as tawdry does.
Posted by Alan at February 5, 2006 07:41 PM