This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.
Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s and 70s, and respond to related occurrences to help mitigate the impact of increasingly reactionary social and political currents. At the same time, progressive librarians can resist erosion of professional independence that comes when censorship pressures undermine core values.
This paper is a post-imprint of an article originally published in the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy (Winter, 2017), with minor edits from the original published article. Some end notes (1, 30, 41 and 51) have been added – re-ordering original numeration to link the reader to subsequent articles, websites and/or occurrences.