Nat Hentoff Responds to Library Journal on Cuba

InfoWhale writes “Nat Hentoff has offered a response to Library Journal’s article ALA AND CUBA: Who’s Afraid of Nat Hentoff? What follows is a transcribed version of Henoff’s response that was faxed to Steve Fesenmaier.

“In view of the ALA Council’s overwhelming rejection of an amendment to its Final Report at the midwinter meeting that called for the largest organization of librarians in the world to demand of Fidel Castro that he release the ten independent librarians in Cuban prison for 20 years and more, the headline on that Library Journal report should more accurately have been: WHO’S AFRAID OF THE CASTRO DEFENDERS ON THE ALA COUNCIL? The Library Journal significantly omitted in its charges against me the rejection of the amendment to the amendment to release the librarian prisons by the ALA Council.

Note from Rochelle: since all that came over the transom is Steve’s transcription, I have not done any editing to the piece, aside from adding html code to make it more readable.

InfoWhale writes “Nat Hentoff has offered a response to Library Journal’s article ALA AND CUBA: Who’s Afraid of Nat Hentoff? What follows is a transcribed version of Henoff’s response that was faxed to Steve Fesenmaier.

“In view of the ALA Council’s overwhelming rejection of an amendment to its Final Report at the midwinter meeting that called for the largest organization of librarians in the world to demand of Fidel Castro that he release the ten independent librarians in Cuban prison for 20 years and more, the headline on that Library Journal report should more accurately have been: WHO’S AFRAID OF THE CASTRO DEFENDERS ON THE ALA COUNCIL? The Library Journal significantly omitted in its charges against me the rejection of the amendment to the amendment to release the librarian prisons by the ALA Council.

Note from Rochelle: since all that came over the transom is Steve’s transcription, I have not done any editing to the piece, aside from adding html code to make it more readable.But the Library Journal accused me “of actually phoning library leaders, including staff at Library Journal, and threatened to write more hostile columns if the ALA didn’t take the position he demandedâ€?- to release the imprisoned Cuban librarians. These librarians, it is pertinent to note, have been designated by Amnesty International as “prisoners of conscience.â€?

I did not phone the Library Journal, although I should have in appreciation of its favorable October review of my current book, “The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance.� In the course of my reporting on that book, I often informed sources at the Justice Department that I would continue writing columns critical of John Ashcroft’s war on the Bill of Rights so long as that war continued. Would the Library Journal characterize such calls as “threatening,� or a continued attempt by a reporter to get explanations of the secret implementation of sections of the Patriot Act and subsequent executive orders?

For another example, for more than five years, I was the only American journalist to repeatedly report on the slavery, genocide and gang rapes perpetrated by forces of the National Islamic government in Sudan on black Christians and traditionalists in the South. I called the Africa Desk of the State Department and other government agencies to tell them that I was still writing about the administration’s indifference to these human rights atrocities. The Bush administration finally took some actions, though still too inadequate, at the urging of black preachers around the country, the American Anti-Slavery Group and other who had been among my sources for my “threatening� letters to the State Department.

In WHO’S AFRAID OF NAT HENTOFF?, the Library Journal reports that “the ALA joined the IFLA to “express deep concern� over the arrest and long prison terms of political dissidents in Cuba.� But the Library Journal failed to indicate how such a deep concern without including a demand for the release of these prisoners for some of whom are in poor health and are not receiving medical treatment was in any real way sufficient?

Also, the Library Journal reported that the ALA and the IFLA “supported an investigative visit from the UN Commission on Human Rights.� But the Library Journal neglected to remind its readers that among the members of the UN Commission on Human Rights are Cuba and such other paladins of free expression as Zimbabwe, China, and Sudan. And that the UN Human Rights Commission, following Castro’s April crackdown that sent the 75 dissenters, including the 10 librarians, to prison refused to pass a condemnation of Castro and also rejected a resolution by Costa Rica calling for the immediate release of the prisoners.

I teach journalism at NYU’S Graduate School of Journalism, and I continually- though not threateningly – remind students of the crucial importance of context in reporting. The article, WHO’S AFRIAD OF NAT HENTOFF? will be cited by me when I return to teaching in the fall.

And I continue to not understand why only five or so of the 182-member ALA governing Council raised their hands in support of the amendment to release the prisoners. Were the prisoners regarded as abstractions rather than actual human beings, abandoned in filthy cells for acting on the freedom-to-read principle at the core of the ALA’s reason for being?

The Library Journal mentioned that I was a “winner of ALA’s Immroth Award for Intellectual Freedom.� In the Village Voice I will be publicly demanding – not threatening – that the ALA remove my name from the list of Immroth Award winners because I do not regard it any longer as an honor.

Nat Hentoff.
(Faxed to Steve Fesenmaier who transcribed it to a computer and e-mailed it out.
Saturday, January 24, 2004 4:30 PM Charleston, West Virginia)
[ Mr. Hentoff does not use the web – for e-mail or otherwise.]