Senator Richard Durbin Wins 2005 NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award

Senator Richard Durbin, was nominated by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English as this year’s NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award winner for his authorship, along with Senators Larry Craig, Russell Feingold, and Ken Salazar, of the Security and Freedom Enhancement Act (SAFE Act).  A press release on the SAFE Act (Durbin Press Release 4/4/2005) provides background supporting Senator Durbin’s nomination for the award:

The SAFE Act would impose reasonable limits on the FBI’s seizure of business and library records, “sneak and peek” warrants,” and roving wiretaps. It would not change pre-PATRIOT Act law in any way. Under the SAFE Act, the FBI would still have wide-ranging authority to combat terrorism. At the same time, the bill would protect innocent Americans from unchecked government surveillance.

“We’re not proposing a full repeal of the PATRIOT Act. I voted for that bill, as did the vast majority of my colleagues in Congress. I believed then, and I still believe, that the PATRIOT Act made a number of reasonable and necessary changes in the law. But in some cases the new law goes too far, and we should amend those provisions to reflect every American citizen’s right to be both safe and free,” Durbin said.

…"The SAFE Act is a narrowly-tailored bipartisan bill that would revise several provisions of the Patriot Act. It would protect civil liberties while giving law enforcement the powers they need to fight terrorism.

"Senator Craig and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Yet we have come together with the understanding that whether you are conservative or progressive, all Americans value our civil liberties.

Each year NCTE”s SLATE Steering Committee and Standing Committee Against Censorship come together to choose the winner of the NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award, an award established in 1996 to honor individuals, groups, or institutions that merit recognition for advancing the cause of intellectual freedom. Past winners include the Washington Coalition Against Censorship; author Chris Crutcher; CATENet Moderator Jim Burke; editor of The Observer Frosty Troy; owner of The Tattered Cover Bookstore Joyce Meskis; executive director of the Student Press Law Center, Mark Goodman, Esq.; authors of At the Schoolhouse Gate: Lessons in Intellectual Freedom and Silent No More: Voices of Courage in American Schools, Loria Pipkin and ReLeah Cosset Lent; and Director of the Douglas County Library System in Colorado, Jamie LaRue.