If they were trying to get rid of her for years, and they definitely could have been, why wait until now? What is it about the current political climate that makes now the right time?
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Go for it. 
There’s even a venue available: the current exhibition at the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art is that there is no current exhibition: a Dutch artist has booked the venue specifically to not exhibit anything (apart from “the exhibition is cancelled” notices), and is making it available for others to use.
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THIS THOUGH. Or “conduct unbecoming” for that matter.
I fully acknowledge the link to my website is biased as I am a friend of Lesley and a radical proponent of equity audits.
Actual links to more coverage from this disciplinary hearing can be found on my site here; I update it as it is published.
- Evanston Live TV interview with Lesley
- 6/01/17, Evanston Patch: Evanston Librarian Faces Firing Over Facebook Post
- 6/01/17, Daily Northwestern: Lesley Williams to face possible termination on Friday
- 6/02/17, Evanston Now: Facebook post may get librarian fired
- 6/02/17, Evanston Review: Evanston librarian could be fired over social media post
- 6/02/17, Boing Boing BBS: Library set to fire librarian who spoke out about racial equity
- 6/02/17, WZRD: Librarian faces termination for Facebook post [text]
- 6/02/17, WZRD: Librarian faces termination for Facebook post [audio]
- 6/03/17, Evanston Patch: Evanston Deletes Documents Showing Board Wanted Popular Librarian Out For Years
And here’s all the coverage I found for what happened in April 2017.
- 4/20/17, Evanston RoundTable: Crowd Rallies Around Lesley Williams
- 4/20/17, Evanston Review: Community support for Evanston librarian (photos)
- 4/21/17, eNews Park Forest: Community Members Pack Hallway in Defense of…
- 4/21/17, Daily Northwestern: Protesters rally to support Evanston librarian…
- 4/24/17, Evanston Review: Dozens rally for Evanston’s only African American librarian
- 4/24/17, WBEZ: Evanston’s Only Black Librarian Faces Possible Disciplinary Action
- 4/25/17, Evanston Review: Evanston library board issues statement supporting director
- 4/25/17, Daily Northwestern: Board defends director, acknowledges lack of diversity
- 4/25/17, Evanston Live TV: Interview with Lesley
- 4/26/17, Evanston Review: Embattled librarian questions timing of disciplinary action
- 4/27/17, RaceBait: A Jew, A Catholic and a Presbyterian walk into a podcast
- 4/28/17, Evanston Patch: Librarian Suspended 15 Days After Board Backs Director
- 4/28/17, Evanston Review: Evanston librarian suspended for 15 days without pay
- 4/28/17, Daily Northwestern: Popular librarian says she received 15-day suspension
- 4/28/17, Evanston RoundTable: Librarian Receives 15-Day Suspension
- 4/28/17, Chicago Reader: Evanston’s Cranky Librarian slapped with 15-day suspension
- 5/03/17, ChicagoNow: Evanston suspended its only Black librarian and I’m not having it
- 5/05/17, Daily Northwestern: Residents call for library equity audit
- 5/26/17, Evanston Review: Suspended Evanston librarian back at work, plans to appeal discipline action
Censorship at the Evanston Public Library
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actually fire her. only very recently did members of the library board feel comfortable about coming out in the open and actually fire her. almost as if they felt some authority figure had created an atmosphere that made now the right time to do that. although you act as if you were making some kind of falsification of arguments from the left you’re actually facilitating the progressive framing for this firing.
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As Dubois was a Stalinist, I’d suggest trying non-totalitarians to balance out a presentation on his work.
No. But if you’re trying to inform library patrons on controversial issues, it’s a good idea to present a few of the most popular positions and arguments.
I work at a community college library. Many students write position papers or create argumentative presentations on controversial issues, especially public policy issues. In order to support them, the library purchases materials showing arguments on different sides of commonly debated issues.
I have strong opinions about many of these issues. But it’s not my place to advocate for those opinions while I’m working at the library. When I’m doing my job correctly, my political opinions are undetectable.
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Equity isn’t a political opinion as the EPL Board President said it’s “ingrained in their DNA” in an article about him.
Evanston Public Library’s Board President Michael Tannen says equity is “in [their] DNA” and “We are interested in equity. We do equity. It’s important to us.” [3-4 word sentences are eerily similar to another white man in a supposedly presidential role]
Those quotes are following his quote saying equity audits are for “schools and school districts, and occasionally hospitals and healthcare systems” and them name-dropping Rev Nabors (a black man) & two black board members as if that justifies anything they do.
Source: http://evanstonroundtable.com/main.asp?SectionID=15&SubSectionID=26&ArticleID=13712
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And this is a perfect example of what my problems with how people mostly do “neutrality”. I have no problem with the goal of neutrality, but it’s one of those goals like perfect equality that, while worth striving for, are never going to be reached. (Although i have hope that at some point we’ll get close enough to perfect equality that’ll it’ll be difficult to tell the difference.)
Most of the problems with the cult of neutrality is because, is suspect, of a basic way our brains tend to classify: is it a thing or is it not a thing (i.e., danger, food, etc.). So our brains tend to binary. The opposite of Stalinist isn’t anti-totalitarian because both Stalinism and anti-totalitarianism are much more complicated than that. But more importantly, Mr. Du Bois was much more complicated than just his Stalinism. The choice of what to contrast, beyond the fallacy of the binary in choosing to contrast rather than explore, is an automatic failure of neutrality unless you choose to find a contrast for every character trait and belief.
I, as a non-librarian, would think that the best W. E. B. Du Bois display would be several of his volumes along with well-respected critiques*. But i, and i suspect all of you, would have a problem with a library that included in their display** a modern-day pamphlet from the KKK denigrating Mr. Du Bois’ name.
* Because, again, neutrality is a good goal to have.
** In a non-academic setting.
Edited to add space between paragraphs.
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I find it pretty hard to believe that if Clinton had won, this wouldn’t be happening, which is the logical conclusion of that position.
I suppose reasonable people can differ, I’m not claiming it doesn’t exist but I find the atmospheric effect claims in general overapplied. Not every racist, sexist thing in the world is due to Trump, as there was plenty before and would have been plenty under a different president. The number one worry in any firing is a lawsuit; their calculus surely would be centered around that, and any judges that would hear this case were in place long before Trump.
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You said “libraries should present multiple sides of any controversy.”
I would have thought that it was obvious that I did not mean that Holocaust deniers were the opposite of Dubois. My point was that if one had a display (or event) about the Holocaust, one would have to also give time to Holocaust deniers, at least according to your standards.
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I would celebrate Du Bois in part by quoting his praise for those whom he celebrated:
“I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil.”
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So which authors and thinkers do you reach across the color line to read?
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I’ll modify that then. Libraries should present multiple sides of any controversy that is commonly and reasonably disputed.
Sure, you could try to pick this apart with weird examples to make a hypothetical perfect the enemy of a realistic good. Or we could actually run a library successfully.
I choose the latter.
Sounds reasonable, but FTR, since you came up with such a cartoonish characterization of Du Bois, there is no commonly and reasonably disputed controversy about him.
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Yeah, I would think Booker T. Washington (and his intellectual heirs, if any) would be the more appropriate opposite to Dubois.
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The comments here have got me thinking about neutrality in librarians. I would think that there would be some sort of code that they would follow. I don’t have any experience with libraries as political spaces. In college, they were just sources of raw information of every possible kind. Our nearest public libraries do not seem particularly political, either. I went through their schedule of programs, and it was mostly reading programs for kids and those who are learning to read, story time in English and Spanish, and meetings in the conference rooms for various clubs and organizations ( D&D for teens, and some book clubs). They teach free classes on beginning computer use, elder care for home caregivers, resume writing and job search skills, and offer tutoring after school.
If I went to the library to look for political books, I could find anything from "Das Kapital’ to “Mein Kampf”. I know that I have seen a copy of “Ecodefense” in there.
If I wanted to check out any of those, I am sure that the librarians would not comment one way or the other to me.
Religion and politics are similar in that way. I am reasonably sure that our librarians are Christian, because almost everyone is. They have books on all sorts of religion. If I checked out a book on Shintoism, I would not want the librarian to lecture me about “false Gods”, even if she had a personal relationship with Jesus, and wanted to share the Good News.
I personally see libraries as safe spaces, in the sense that they were always really magical and comforting places to me. I would be pretty unhappy to find myself being evangelized to in there, about religion or politics or ecology, or anything else.
It is desirable for librarians to be openly passionate and vocal about literacy and the opposition to censorship.
But we might be differing here on what sort of place we want our libraries to be.
How so? Du Bois was a Stalinist. That is a historical fact.
Booker T. Washington would be an excellent choice as a way of showing different approaches for African Americans to counteract oppression.
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