This article appeared in today's Wisconsin State Journal, reprinted from the New York Times. It is not about film exactly, but it deals with issues of censorship in academia which many of us have had or will have to deal with. (Reprinted without permission.) __Canada closes doors to 'obscene' literature__ By Sarah Lyall (NY Times) Canadians have been reading Marguerite Duras' stories of love, obsession and heartbreak for years. But when an American publisher, Blue Moon Books, of NYC, tried to ship 30 copies of her novella "The Man Sitting in the Corridor" to Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., this fall, the books were seized at the border. According to a form filled out by a customs official named Corinne M. Honey, several scenes in the book, in which a woman is beaten and eventually dies after passionate sex, put it in a vast category of material that is barred from entering the country because it is considered obscene or exploitative. [....] The university wanted the books for a course on the works of Duras . . . . When Trent consulted a lawyer and began complaining very publicly, the customs agency abruptly reversed itself, declared that the book wasn't obscene after all, and let the next shipment through. But many others have met a different fate. Hundreds of books, magazines, and newspapers have been detained, often for months at a time, or banned outright by officials up and down the long Canadian-American border. No commentary from me, except to note the delicious irony of that assiduous customs official's name, which would make a fine nom de porn. Doug Riblet University of Wisconsin--Madison [log in to unmask]