More than 120 anti-censorship advocates convened September 17 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., for a daylong Intellectual Freedom Summit. The event, organized by the American Library Association (ALA), aimed to strengthen partnerships and sharpen strategy in the battle against book challenges.
Publishers, authors, librarians, booksellers, national organizations, and other library supporters were among those attending the summit, the third of its kind in ALA’s nearly 150-year history. The last ALA Intellectual Freedom Summit was held in 1953. That summit produced the Freedom to Read Statement, a response to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attempts to remove reading materials deemed controversial or inappropriate from libraries and other institutions.
During her opening remarks, ALA President Cindy Hohl read the first two lines of the 71-year-old statement, noting the parallel with today’s censorship fight: “The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack.”
Hohl’s remarks were followed by those of Brian Bannon, New York Public Library’s Merryl and James Tisch director, and opening keynote speaker Nikole Hannah-Jones, journalist and author, who is best known for creating the 1619 Project, chronicling the history and legacy of slavery in the US.
In her keynote, Hannah-Jones discussed the power of reading to change minds, build empathy, and topple systems. She recounted spending hours at the Waterloo (Iowa) Public Library as a kid, and later being influenced by a high school teacher who inspired her to read books about Black studies.
But the current legislative movement to erase the history of racial inequality and injustice is one tactic of reimplementing inequitable policies, she said. “It is narrative, more than anything, that drives policy.” Not facts, research, or peer-reviewed data, she said. “Who controls the narrative is what determines what policies we accept as a country.”
While this strategy of banning books is not new, “it is our collective duty to fight back,” Hannah-Jones said. “It should not take courage to be a librarian. Your work is prodemocracy work. Just do what you do—and also vote.”
Censorship past and present
Following Hannah-Jones, a panel discussed specific censorship campaigns, including those in Arkansas and Texas, and how they were defeated. The key is coordination and communication, said panelist Becky Calzada, president of American Association of School Librarians and cofounding member of the grassroots Texas FReadom Fighters.
To overcome misinformation campaigns, Calzada said, it’s important to make sure everyone—staffers, school board members, administration—is on the same page about goals, missions, and policies. “The opposition’s goal is to shame,” she said. Seeking allies “one interaction at a time” is especially critical for singletons like school libraries, which must form partnerships with other types of libraries and librarians, as well as authors, publishers, and booksellers.
Nate Coulter, executive director of Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock, said that self-censorship is “alarming.” This wariness to challenge political norms is a great threat, he said, but “we have to take these fights on.” One way to do this, Coulter suggested, is to be patient when soundbites are on the attack, instead opting to invite officials to the library and meet the kids who use the library to understand its value.
Author Sara Paretsky said that those who want to fight censorship must put candidates on the local boards of schools, libraries, and police. She also encouraged library workers to provide more opportunities for challenged authors to speak at public libraries.
“That fire is spreading,” Paretsky cautioned, “and it’s up to us to be in the fire brigade.”
A public good
“We believe in the public good when we believe the public is good,” said Emily Knox, professor in the School of Information Sciences at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Knox was citing author Heather McGhee from her book The Sum of Us, which examines white America’s focus on zero-sum thinking, or the notion that for them to win, people of color must lose. So many people are unwilling, Knox said, to fund—with tax dollars or otherwise—anything that invests in people who don’t look like them.
A few possible ways to build support for intellectual freedom include to “call in allies” and to have a “shared language,” said Stephanie “Cole” Adams, an attorney and board member of the Freedom to Read Foundation. What’s more, Adams said, libraries must “rise above the jargons of our profession” and develop a reflexive habit to say that “things stop here. Don’t bully the library.”
Attorney Will Creeley, legal director at the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), discussed his organization’s efforts to help plaintiffs in Little v. Llano County. FIRE filed an amicus brief in the case in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a case that is a “microcosm of what we’re seeing nationally,” Creeley said. “It’s a hostile takeover of the library and school board. It’s vigilante censorship.”
While some libraries pursue the litigation route, Maryland went the legislative route, earlier this year becoming the second state to pass the Freedom to Read Act, which protects collections and librarians. Sonia Alcántara-Antoine, CEO of Baltimore County (Md.) Public Library, spoke about her library system’s goal of serving as a public forum for discussion and debate. Whether on the topic of gerrymandering or dis- and misinformation, she said the library’s role is to “provoke our community to think” and promote democracy: “This is bigger than the books.”
Proposed solutions and next steps
In the afternoon, four panelists offered solutions to help libraries and library users in their pursuit of the freedom to read. The panelists included Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel of FIRE; Skip Dye, senior vice president of sales operations for Penguin Random House; Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York City; and Cameron Samuels, organizer of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas.
To be successful in the fight against censorship forces, they cited the need for communication, a clear message, organized coalitions, recognizing the humanity of everyone involved, and understanding where people are coming from.
We are the majority, and we have to start acting like it.
Following three breakout sessions—on the topics of media and communications, public engagement, and litigation—the final panel included Martin Garnar, director of the Amherst (Mass.) College Library; Sam Helmick, ALA president-elect and Iowa City Public Library’s Community and Access Services Coordinator; author David Levithan, whose books centering LGBTQ+ characters and stories have been challenged and banned; and Paul Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance.
In January, Levithan, along with several other authors formed Authors Against Book Bans—a coalition of writers, illustrators, anthology editors and contributors, and other book creators—to defend the freedom to read. “We are the majority, and we have to start acting like it,” Levithan said.
He offered these tips to push the momentum forward:
- Find leaders to lead the coalition of all the different groups fighting censorship.
- Activate allies, especially young people.
- Be proactive and reactive. “Yes, we’re the fire brigade,” he said. However, “we need to make sure the arsonists don’t get the matches in the first place.”
- Acknowledge how difficult this work is.
- Take a stand. By not taking a stand in a culture war, we will lose.
- Organize and be organized.
- Meet regularly and be accessible to anyone in the fight.
Closing the day as keynote speaker was science fiction and nonfiction author Annalee Newitz. They drew parallels between the tactics used in the culture war to those used in kinetic warfare. But unlike with traditional war, Newitz said, there is little or no discussion of how a culture war can end. “What does it look like to achieve cultural peace?”
Despite the propaganda against libraries, there is hope, they said.
“Remember: Small actions do matter, because we are doing them together,” said Newitz. “Not just us here in this room, but all the people we are connected with beyond this room and beyond this moment in time. We are not alone. And as long as we stick together, we never will be.”
