The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee has filed an open records request for more information on the McMinn County Board of Education’s removal of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale,” an award-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from the eighth-grade curriculum.
In his graphic novel, Spiegelman tells the story of the Holocaust, depicting Nazis as cats and Jews as mice. The book grapples with the mass murder of Jews in Europe, as well as the ways in which the members of Spiegelman’s family who survived the Holocaust dealt with the atrocity. But the McMinn board voted unanimously in January to remove it from the curriculum, citing the book’s language and nudity.
The request claims the removal of the book “poses an urgent threat to academic freedom” and states the First Amendment “protects … the right of students … to receive information and ideas” while accusing the board of limiting student access to events of the Holocaust. It also refers to the board’s own policy manual and claims the board did not follow its established procedures or state that members had read the book in its entirety before voting for its removal, which the ACLU claims “sets a dangerous precedent.”
The group is requesting documents, including meeting minutes, electronic communications, public statements, policies and procedures related to the decision from the director of schools, school board and any school staff member during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years.
The Times Free Press has also asked for documents but has received no response from the school system more than eight business days later, which could be viewed as a violation of the Tennessee Open Records Act, according to Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government. Failure to respond can be seen legally as a denial of the request, and a person who is denied a public record can sue and potentially be awarded attorney’s fees, Fisher said.