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| Interior image from Persepolis. | |
Chicago Public School administrators withdrew the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi from the seventh grade curriculum because of "graphic images of torture (depictions of a man urinating on another and placing a hot iron on another's back), as well as obscene language," a lawyer for the school board explained in a letter responding to a letter last week from a group of free speech and First Amendment organizations, including the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the Kids' Right to Read Project of the National Coalition Against Censorship.
In the letter, Lee Ann Lowder, deputy general counsel in the law department of the Chicago Board of Education, also argued that the board has "broad discretion" to determine school curricula and that removing Persepolis from seventh grade curriculum does not violate the First Amendment. She noted that the board is still considering "whether and how Persepolis will be used in the eighth through tenth grade curricula."