From an earlier post about supposedly “pro-palestinian” photos that were taken down from a library exhibit in Côte-St-Luc in Montreal, the CLA has issued a press release asking the Côte-St-Luc council members to reverse its decision to remove the “offending” pictures.
While CLA respects that a public institution is free to set its own policies, CLA notes the library deemed the exhibit worthy enough to display in the first place. In doing so, it was quite properly fulfilling its role as a centre for freedom of expression, intellectual discussion and debate within its community. It was doing what a library should.CLA urges the Côte-St-Luc council to support its library as a place where an open exchange of ideas and opinions are encouraged, rather than a place where criticism is dealt with by censorship, by re-opening the full exhibit.