Industry Voices - Chris Finan

As Tattered Cover Book Store owner Joyce Meskis enters retirement, ABFE Director Chris Finan reflects on how she has defended the First Amendment rights of readers and booksellers over the decades.

ABFE Director Chris Finan offers his thoughts on how two of President Trump’s appointees — Jeff Sessions and Neil M. Gorsuch — could significantly affect the exercise of First Amendment freedoms.

In the face of growing ideological polarization, bookstores offer hope for the future, writes ABFE Director Chris Finan.

Though a recent report found there is no free speech crisis on campus, there is a real need for more education for students about the importance of free expression, writes ABFE Director Chris Finan.

In his latest column on the history of the fight for free speech, ABFE Director Chris Finan looks at the case against a bookseller that finally led the Massachusetts legislature to change the state’s obscenity law.

ABFE Director Chris Finan looks at an event that turned the tide against widespread book banning in late 1920s Boston.

ABFE Director Chris Finan looks back at the life of Rhett Jackson, a much-honored Southern gentleman who confounded people's expectations and always stood up for civil rights and First Amendment issues.

This article, part of an occasional series on the history of free speech by ABFE Director Chris Finan, looks at efforts to ban H.L. Mencken's magazine, American Mercury, in 1920s Boston, which marked the start of a critical battle for free speech in books.

In his monthly personal opinion column, ABFE Director Chris Finan discusses the similarities he finds in the government’s attempts to force Apple to unlock the contents of an iPhone and its past maneuvers to infringe on the reader privacy rights of bookstore customers.

ABFE Director Chris Finan looks at the implications for the freedom to write, publish, and sell books, when authors and publishers respond to controversies over their works by pulling them from the marketplace.

A plan to read a children’s book about a transgender girl to a Wisconsin elementary school class was cancelled in late November, when school officials were threatened with legal action. However, the attempted censorship appears to have backfired, writes ABFE Director Chris Finan.

Some of the students involved in campus protests over racial discrimination have demonstrated hostility toward the free speech rights of others. Should booksellers side with a minority that is trying to make itself heard or condemn those who violate the very rights that make protest possible? asks ABFE Director Chris Finan.

In 1915, Boston booksellers were part of an anti-vice group that reviewed books with sexual content and dictated whether they were to be removed from bookstore shelves. In this first article in a series, ABFE Director Chris Finan looks at how booksellers moved from banning books to today’s celebration of Banned Books Week.

In his latest column, ABFE Director Chris Finan discusses why ABA has filed an amicus brief in the latest ACLU challenge to an NSA surveillance program. Reader privacy is at stake.

In his monthly opinion column, ABFE Director Chris Finan looks at troubling results from recent polls on Americans’ understanding of their First Amendment rights as well as their feelings towards censorship.