CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL BANS ‘ISLAMOPHOBIC’ NOVEL — AND NOW PARENTS & TEACHERS
ARE PROTESTING
Mar. 15, 2013 3:15pm Tiffany Gabbay
 Photo source: Persepolis
Written by an Iranian woman who once told her schoolteacher in Tehran that she wanted to “ be a prophet,” the memoir “Persepolis” has been banned in Iran, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates because the work is considered to be Islamophobicand blasphemous to Muslims. What’s more, it has also been banned in a Chicago public school for ostensibly the same reasons.
Teachers, students and parents at Chicago’s Lane Tech College Prep are staging a protest Friday after all traces of Marjane Satrapi’s novel was purged from the North Side school — a decision made by Principal Christopher Dignam, who said he was instructed by Chicago Public School officials to remove the book.
The protest, scheduled to take place from 3:30 to 4 p.m., at Western Avenue and Addison Street, is, according to an email from the members of the school’s union, intended to “support the First Amendment, education and intellectual freedom.” It comes in response to a March 14 email from Dignam that reportedly told faculty members that “one of the Network Instructional Support Leaders stopped by my office and informed me (per a directive given during the Chief of Schools meeting on March 11) that all ISLs were directed to physically go to each school in the Network by Friday (3/15).”
Further, according to Dignam, he was also instructed to:
• “Confirm that “Persepolis” is not in the library,
• “Confirm that it has not been checked out by a student or teacher,
• “Confirm with the school principal that it is not being used in any classrooms,
• “And to collect the autobiographic graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi from all classrooms and the Library.” |
