Longtime ALA Intellectual Freedom Leader Judith Krug Dies
Norman Oder & Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 4/15/2009
- Was 40-year Office for Intellectual Freedom veteran
- Founded Banned Books Week
Judith Fingeret Krug, longtime director of American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) and executive director of the Freedom To Read Foundation (FTRF), died April 11 after a year-long fight with stomach cancer. She was 69.
(Here's an On the Media salute)
ALA officials said she died at Evanston Hospital in suburban Chicago. Krug was a staunch fighter against censorship and founder of Banned Books Week. She had been head of the OIF since 1967.
Krug, according to a statement forwarded by ALA Executive Director Keith Fiels, "worked tirelessly to guarantee the rights of individuals to express ideas and read the ideas of others without governmental interference. Through her unwavering support of writers, teachers, librarians, and above all, students, she has advised countless numbers of librarians and trustees in dealing with challenges to library material. She has been involved in multiple First Amendment cases that have gone all the way to the United States Supreme Court."
"Her legacy is a lifetime of passionate commitment, advocacy, and affirmative actions to protect the Constitutional rights of citizens granted under the First Amendment," Fiels said.
The common definition of "librarian," editorialized Dorothy Samuels in the April 15 New York Times , (which also published a respectful obituary), "leaves out the larger role librarians play in our democracy, facilitating access to information and ideas and promoting and protecting a precious First Amendment right: the freedom to read. No one took that role more seriously than Judith Krug..."
Krug won many honors, including: the Joseph P. Lippincott Award, the Irita Van Doren Award, the Harry Kalven Freedom of Expression Award, and most recently the William J. Brennan, Jr. award, from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Free Expression. The Freedom to Read Foundation had already scheduled an honor for her in July, saluting her years of vision and leadership.
Background and family
Judith Fingeret was born in Pittsburgh. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and received a Masters degree from the University of Chicago and a PhD from the University of Illinois.
She is survived by her husband Herbert and her loving children Steven of Northbrook, and Michelle Litchman of Glencoe and five grandchildren: Jessica, Sydney, Hannah, Rachel and Jason. Additionally, she is survived by her brothers, Jay Fingeret and Dr. Arnold Fingeret of Pittsburgh PA, and her sister and brother-in-law, Shirley and Dr. Howard Katzman of Miami, FL. She was preceded in death by her sister Susan Pavsner of Bethesda MD.
Services were held at Beth Emet Synagogue, Evanston, on April 14 at 10 a.m., followed by internment at Shalom Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to The Freedom to Read Foundation, 50 East Huron, Chicago Illinois 60611.
