Teri Lesesne as Professor Nana, the Censor of Sam Houston State University

Photo credit: ALAN

The censor of Sam Houston State University's Department of Library Science is none other than Dr. Teri Lesesne ("rhymes with insane"), aka Professor Nana who teaches censorship.  She is illustrative of how censors work and how they hide and excuse their censorship.

She holds herself out as a professor who teaches school librarians to oppose censorship using, for example, slideshows where the first thing she teaches is "Let children read whatever they want...." See:

• "Censorship: Not Quite Black and White," by Teri S. Lesesne, Sam Houston State University, circa 21-24 November 2013:

Censorship Not Quite Black and White NCTE 2013 from Teri Lesesne

But when it comes to things she does not want people to hear, that she censors out.  Children should read absolutely anything, she teaches school librarians, but adults should not hear what she wants to be censored.

She wrote something false, mean, and intentionally misleading about me on her blog:

• "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?," by Teri Lesesne (Professor Nana), The Goddess of YA Literature, 26 September 2014.

I responded to her attack in a comment, but it got marked as spam.  I sent her a message about this.  She published my response in a second piece she wrote about me, but only in her own self-interest, and again she cast me in a negative light:

• "Here Ya Go!," by Teri Lesesne (Professor Nana), The Goddess of YA Literature, 9 October 2014.

I responded to that attack as well, and again it got marked as spam.  Again I informed her of this and asked her to take it out of spam.

Again she did not.  Instead, she launched yet a third attack on me, this time going out of her way to be as downright nasty, unprofessional, and flat out false as she could possibly be:

• "Guess Who Is Back?," by Teri Lesesne (Professor Nana), The Goddess of YA Literature, 11 October 2014.

My comments simply do not appear on her blog called The Goddess of YA Literature.  (At least as of this time slice.)  When she added one it was in another blog post of her own, hence out of context; it was couched in yet more negative language, and she still did not approve my original comment on her first hit piece on me.  And she never responds to substantive issues.  My comments I post are simply blocked from her site.  Invisible.  Censored out.  By a professor teaching censorship.  At a public institution.  At Sam Houston State University.

Professor Nana feigns innocence, but I have asked her to publish my comments and she has refused, responding instead with the nastiest of new posts.  And this censorship-loving professor actually teaches school librarians not to censor anything from children.  The first page of her training linked above quotes the American Library Association as saying, "Censorship by librarians of constitutionally protected speech, whether for protection or any other reason, violates the First Amendment."  Setting aside that that's legally false, Professor Nana does not even practice what she preaches.  She actually gets paid a publicly-funded salary to teach one thing and do the exact opposite in real life from her public school perch.  She's a paid government censor.

Let me be very clear.  I asked Professor Nana to mark my comment as not spam and publish my comment and she has refused.  She leaves my comments marked as spam.  That not only censors out my comments, but it tells her blog platform that comments from me are considered spam, at least by her.  That makes it harder for me to make other comments on any blog on her blog's platform, in this case LiveJournal, not just on her blog.

It is a means of using the spam filter to censor out speech you hate.  All from a professor in a profession that supposedly opposes censorship and whose leading organization holds itself out as the nation's self-arrogated censorship police.  When I get library mail in my spam folder that I do not like because I disagree with it, I actively click the not spam button.  I play fair.  Professor Nana does not.  I may disagree with it, but it is not spam, and I know leaving it marked as spam will make it harder for the sender to get any message through to anyone else.

By asking Teri Lesesne to publish my comment, I did exactly what I was directed to do by her blog's platform, hyperlinks omitted, emphasis mine:

Due to the variety of anti-spam features that LiveJournal employs there is always a possibility that your legitimate entries or comments will be mis-identified as spam.  If your entries or comments have been incorrectly mis-identified as spam, please open up a Support request....  In addition to contacting Support, you can also contact the journal owner or community owner/maintainers and ask them to mark your comment or entry as not-spam.

But in her third attack piece, Professor Nana, the Goddess of YA Literature, the censorship professor at the Department of Library Science at Sam Houston State University, wrote, "I replied (yes, I should know better) that I had not blocked comments on the blog.  I checked the comment page on my blog and there is nothing there for me to 'mark' and publish. .... This is the end of you, sir.  ....  He accused me then of blocking his comments (and, once again, I did NOT)."  And yet my comments to this day are still not on any of her blog posts about me.

@ProfessorNana I just commented again, and again it was marked as spam. It is not spam. Please mark it as not spam and publish it.
— Dan Kleinman (@SafeLibraries) October 11, 2014

Notice she puts the word "mark" in single quotes to indicate she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about or I am even incapable of speaking intelligently.  It is passive-aggressive bullying.  Yet that is exactly what LiveJournal says to do, "ask them to mark your comment or entry as not-spam."  In the tweet shown above you can see I did exactly what LiveJournal instructed me to do.  Professor Nana is in no position to make it appear I asked for the impossible.

Sam Houston State University

"Now you are just simply baiting me and falsely accusing me of being a censor," she protests.  No, I'm not baiting or deliberately taunting her; she has said false and mean things about me repeatedly and is blocking my responses repeatedly.

No, I'm not falsely accusing her of being a censor.  Instead, I am reporting that she is a censor.  My evidence includes 1) my comments as posted by me do not appear on her blog posts despite my efforts to have them posted per LiveJournal instructions by requesting her to publish them, 2) her comments about me are false and misleading and evidence an intention to censor, not an intention to act professionally by identifying and resolving any technical issue blocking my ability to comment, if any, and 3) her blog is promoted by Sam Houston State University, a public university, where she is employed to teach library science, meaning her actions are not only hypocritical but also represent official government censorship, in this case by a public institution of learning.

"Paint me and anyone who dare object to your form of censorship however you like," she says.  And exactly what form of "censorship" is that?  I oppose censorship in all its forms.  Keeping inappropriate material from children is a serious matter but it is not censorship.  Besides, the last book banned in the USA was Fanny Hill, and that was in 1963, over 50 years ago.  For context, a Banned Books Week cosponsor recently wrote that it was censorship to keep middle school children from reading in school about explicit adult content, so I published an extensive excerpt so people can see exactly what type of material Professor Nana and others like her are protecting.

This is how the censor works.  Censors make false and misleading claims about people who they want to smear so others will not pay attention to them.  They mark legitimate responses as spam or leave them marked as spam so computers can spread the censorship further.  They continue to attack since those censored have no platform on which to respond.  They modify your words then attack you for something you did not say.  The icing on the cake is doing this in a profession that opposes censorship and as a professor who teaches school librarians to oppose censorship.

Think about it.  The censor of Sam Houston State University is the professor teaching censorship.

I should write a letter to Sam Houston State University to see if Professor Censor is really the best match for teaching school librarians about censorship.  There are so many wonderful librarians who can teach.  Actively employing an active censor, and a mean one at that, might not be a good fit for a respected public university, "one of the oldest purpose-built institutions for the instruction of teachers west of the Mississippi River and the first such institution of its type in Texas."

For those wishing to see the material being censored, I published it on my SafeLibraries Publications page here.


NOTE ADDED 20 OCTOBER 2014:

Look how supposedly professional librarians, prompted by Professor Censor, pile on to make a mockery of their professional ethics and values, egged on by Walt Crawford:

• "LSW: Walt Crawford," by Walt Crawford, FriendFeed, 12 October 2014.

URL of this page: safelibraries.blogspot.com/2014/10/professor-nana.html

On Twitter: @ProfessorNana @SamHoustonState @SHSULIBSCI #censorship

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