Our 2025 Focus: Intellectual Freedom
MetaCat Foundation has a new and specially funded project providing software and technical services at NO CHARGE to enable nonprofit organizations to create searchable public databases about cases threatening intellectual freedom, including freedoms of belief, expression, teaching, learning, inquiry, publication, and access to information and ideas. The databases should be suitable for educating the public and useful for teaching, learning, and research about these topics.
Recently, the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska has used this software to develop a case repository concerning cases of intellectual freedom in Nebraska teaching and research. Keep scrolling to learn more and browse what MetaCat Foundation has built for them at NO COST!
The Academic Freedom Nebraska Case Repository
The Academic Freedom Nebraska Case Repository is a searchable collection of Nebraska cases involving or threatening intellectual freedom in academic contexts. Only a few of the cases are legal cases but all are specific incidents. This project is a collaboration between MetaCat Foundation and the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska (AFCON), a coalition of Nebraska organizations concerned with intellectual freedom in academic contexts, including freedoms of belief, expression, teaching, learning, inquiry, publication, and access to information and ideas. The repository can be browsed using the following keywords:
· issue (e.g., curriculum, research, book censorship, student press);
· course/topic (e.g., history, religion, sexuality, violence, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ+);
· type of institution (K-12 education, higher education, library);
· target (e.g., teacher, student, researcher);
· time period (cases range from 1870 to 2024);
· place (Lincoln, Omaha, and many others);
· or any combination of these categories (e.g., race/ethnicity in K-12 education).
We hope this resource will be useful to anyone interested in teaching, learning, or writing about intellectual freedom in matters of education or research. We are happy to hear from anyone with knowledge about these cases or about others that should be added. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, additions, or corrections, email David Moshman at dmoshman1@unl.edu.
