The difference between “left” and “liberal” has always seemed cloudy to me, but in this Unherd interview and corresponding article, Susan Nieman, author of the upcoming book Left is not Woke, claims that the principles both leftism and liberalism hold in common are the following:
a commitment to universalism over tribalism
the belief in a principled distinction between justice and power
the conviction that progress, while never inevitable, is possible
While Neiman doesn’t define “woke” explicitly, she characterizes woke as in opposition to these principles.
By these definitions, are libraries left/ liberal or are they woke?
Or, through their efforts at preserving important books and documents from the past, are libraries conservative?
Although in the interview Nieman seems to equate populism with a growing threat of fascism (despite the fact that many populists see developments embraced by the left, such as vaccine mandates and digital IDs, as fascist), populism is defined by Oxford Languages as “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.” By this definition, are libraries populist?
What about libertarianism, defined by Oxford Languages as “a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in the free market and the private lives of citizens.” Despite public libraries being government agencies, are they in some senses libertarian?
Are these divisions somewhat arbitrary? Do the basic principles of libraries cut across all political categories? Or, since they are dependent on government funding, do libraries blow with the political wind?
top image: Polling station 6 may 2010.jpg/ Wikimedia commons
I listened to a program last night about challenges to library collections by library leaders. It was a passionate program and made many good points. However, the language that was used characterized the Right and those bringing the challenges in very negative ways. That might be true, but not to any from the general population who listens. BTW, the state teacher's union--Florida Education Association, is bringing a lawsuit about book challenges. Here is the announcement from FEA: https://feaweb.org/release/teachers-librarians-parents-challenge-censorship-agenda/
It seems to me that many of the examples Dabrinski provides of library work could just as easily fall under "populism" or "libertarianism" as they could "liberal," "left," or "woke/progressive."
Non-librarian here (frequent patron for decades). My experience has been that libraries in the past have been largely "preservative", as in being repositories of older sources of material to prevent it from disappearing, as well as trying to satisfy new interests. And I believe that is as it should be. The most alarming thing to arise lately is the attempts to purge libraries of material disliked by any faction. The Left likes to focus on the Right's attempts to prevent what they view as material subversive of their children primarily. But they seem to be blind to their own attempts to purge libraries of classic literature and replace it with modified literature or just eliminate it as "racist", "bigoted" or whatever.
I read a book about five years ago ("The Swerve: How the World became Modern", by Stephan Greenblatt) that described an amazing book written by Lucretius in the 1st century, based on the writings of a Greek, Epicurus, which have been entirely lost. All that is known about Epicurus is based on the impact he had on contemporaries whose writings about him survived. Probably the last actual writings of Epicurus disappeared with the burning of library at Alexandria, but no one can be sure.
This book was eye-opening for me. I am an engineer by trade and training, but was always interested in philosophy and took many classes in it while in college. Even so, I had developed a very false notion of what Epicurus was all about (the word "Epicurean" today could hardly be any further from his thought). You can form your own opinions. But this book by Lucretous - a poem, really - summarizing Epicurus' thought almost didn't make it to modernity - which is what The Swerve is primarily about. It had been systematically rooted out and burned over a period of centuries by the Catholic Church, as containing highly heretical ideas (which was true, actually). It dwindled down to private collections in the third and forth centuries and eventually disappeared altogether. Mention of it was made in other non-banned works, but no known copies of it existed anywhere. Around the time of Machiavelli, a minor Italian bureaucrat lost his position when his patron fell out of power; he had to leave Italy for awhile to "lay low" until the political climate changed again. He wandered around France and Germany, visiting bookstores because he was also a bibliophile. I can't remember exactly where he found it now - it was in some German rural backwater I think - in a monastery where the monks would dutifully copy out scrolls and manuscripts which they often couldn't even understand. At this monastery they had been preserving a copy of Epicurus' poem for centuries without knowing what it was. The Italian had an inkling that it was the lost work of Epicurus and made a hand copy of it which he got back to Italy with eventually. Now, of course, you can't walk into a decent used bookstore that doesn't have numerous translations of "On the Nature of Things." Close call.
But there are so many other works that have been lost. We have - what? - only one volume that was ultimately preserved of Aeschylus - dozens more were talked about but lost. They were apparently alphabetized in this "complete works of" set and we got one of the later volumes. Sophocles - we have a ridiculously small subset of his plays. Euripides is a little better, but still, many lost works.
For me, the preservation of books and other materials for future generations - distant future generations - is what libraries should primarily be about. Not welcome centers for homeless people. Not collections of only politically correct books (of any politics). But I have my biases I am sure.
Different types of libraries are for different purposes. The big academic libraries etc are supposed to preserve materials. The small public libraries are also community centers. I rely on my public library for baby playgroups and story times. But yes, there should be some libraries out there preserving material for future generations.
The definitions of political terms are so all over the place that they often lose their meaning. I think that libraries are often at the mercy of local politics and donors. Like public schooling, they have the potential to be liberatory or to be tools of indoctrination. Libraries may serve the people, but who is running the libraries and setting the library agendas? It's the professional class. They think that they know what is right for the people. There's a long history of libraries serving a moralizing role within society. I wonder why Carnegie donated all those library buildings?
The Information Disorder report from the Atlantic Council has been getting some attention lately from those that are following the Twitter Files. I remember reading this when it came out and cringing at their recommendations for libraries. Another place to make sure the "correct" version of information literacy is spread and promoted.
Populism gets maligned and called "right wing" and fascist, but that's ridiculous. Thomas Frank wrote an excellent book on the history of populism: The People, NO.
I went into my old notes for this because I remember being a little too honest with library administration...my boss had asked me if there was any potential for the library to respond to the accompanying CFP (https://www.aspentechpolicyhub.org/information-disorder-prize-competition/), so I reviewed the report and the recommendation for libraries and came up with this observation at the time:
...the report appears to call for elite-driven top-down approaches to controlling information disorder through a federal government-run central domestic propaganda organization (e.g., solutions for a "comprehensive federal approach" and a "public restoration fund") more so than civic/information literacy education.
I’d like to see a link too. Sounds like what I have seen...there has been a lot of movement towards using libraries as propaganda distributors cloaked as “your trusted government” ... it’s like they think we all forget there is always an opposing view and just because one group is voted in it doesn’t make them the everlasting knowers of The One Great Truth.
Structuralism--one of the philosophical bases for so-called "wokeness"--inspires your average library school professor these days towing the average library school party line to insist that, like, no library is, like, neutral and stuff. It isn't, like, possible! And to a certain extent, they're right.
Making a balanced collection of information available and offering a variety of services without conscious, purposeful regard for the backgrounds, experiences or statuses of those served is itself a “political” act under the purposely and consciously non-partisan ideological umbrellas of “intellectual freedom” and “public accommodation.” A decently run public library is a monument and temple to liberalism, with that word used in the same sense as "liberal arts."
Here in Iowa, the irony of the prevailing "conflict" is apparent every day. The most vocal proponents of policies, viewpoints etc. that we have come to identify as "woke" are really no more realistic, pro-human, pro-individual, pro-science and certainly, certainly no LESS anti-intellectual than the most convinced religious zealots. They are both easily identifiable as definitively ILLIBERAL. Scratch either one slightly and venom comes out; they both nastily badmouth each other, of course, but they also berate liberals as milquetoasts, wimps, fence-sitters. Liberals of the "liberty" sort bother them both very much. Google: "Liberals get the bullet, too." Liberals threaten the business of both the anti-Little House on the Prairie crowd and the anti-books-in which-a-preteen-character-admits-to-having-masturbated-with-a-same-sex-friend crowd. Both gangs think the name of the game is CONTROLLING INFORMATION, thus OPINIONS, thus PEOPLE.
As for "fascism," in the last 20 years we have seen the diaphanous, ill-defined (but intuitively recognizable) Spirit of Fascism do a thorough victory lap through the important aspects of American public life. It inspired right-leaners to avenge a terror attack many times over, killing and displacing hundreds and thousands if not millions of people (most probably not that interested in global politics or Jihadism) and stomping on our domestic civil liberties with spiked golf shoes . Then, less than 20 years later, it inspired left-leaners to regard their neighbors as a lost and ignorant "them" based on their skeptical response to what has amounted to a not-very-well-understood flu-like illness of obviously exaggerated threat OR their unwillingness to put the right yard sign signaling the right virtue at the right time OR having had the audacity to NOT VOTE LIKE THEM. And think back, if you're old enough: there has been/is an increasing demand for UNTHINKING, REFLEXIVE PERFORMANCE and punishment for refusing, two of the defining characteristics of fascism. "Clap for the troops," "Sing along to 'Proud to Be an American' for the third time this school year," "Wear the mask," "Kneel for {INSERT VICTIM OF THIS WEEK'S NEWS CYCLE}," "Say something snarky about Trump," "Pretend to Believe What We Say."
Something to consider, fellow ALA critics, is the wildly differing responses of our professional organization to what amounts to two different but equally virulent strains of threat to intellectual freedom and privacy. Consider the relatively vigorous response to the PATRIOT Act circa 2003 versus the equal but opposite compliance-comfortable response to the "Questioning the CDC is Dangerous Disinformation!" censorship that was obvious and pervasive in our field.
To me, it is hard to say if libraries have a natural political orientation. My first answer is that it depends on the ideology of the librarians. A library managed by "woke" librarians will be different than libraries managed by liberal, populist, or conservative librarians.
But my second deeper answer is that a public library open to everyone is more naturally liberal in the broad sense defined by Nieman. Public libraries value the power of the written word and welcome anyone to come in and try to figure things out for themselves. They encourage intellectual independence and have faith that anyone can achieve it -- which go along with the commitment to universalism and progress.
Thus, the recent trend in librarianship to distrust the public's ability to think for themselves (b/c they are too easily fooled by misinformation, blinded by white privilege, or corrupted by the deep, structural forms of oppression that distort the very perception of reality for the average person trapped in our society) does seem to be at odds with the fundamental purpose of building libraries for the public.
I listened to a program last night about challenges to library collections by library leaders. It was a passionate program and made many good points. However, the language that was used characterized the Right and those bringing the challenges in very negative ways. That might be true, but not to any from the general population who listens. BTW, the state teacher's union--Florida Education Association, is bringing a lawsuit about book challenges. Here is the announcement from FEA: https://feaweb.org/release/teachers-librarians-parents-challenge-censorship-agenda/
I hadn't heard about that, thank you.
This is a link to the program Kathleen mentioned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcPEEy6bBfo
It seems to me that many of the examples Dabrinski provides of library work could just as easily fall under "populism" or "libertarianism" as they could "liberal," "left," or "woke/progressive."
Non-librarian here (frequent patron for decades). My experience has been that libraries in the past have been largely "preservative", as in being repositories of older sources of material to prevent it from disappearing, as well as trying to satisfy new interests. And I believe that is as it should be. The most alarming thing to arise lately is the attempts to purge libraries of material disliked by any faction. The Left likes to focus on the Right's attempts to prevent what they view as material subversive of their children primarily. But they seem to be blind to their own attempts to purge libraries of classic literature and replace it with modified literature or just eliminate it as "racist", "bigoted" or whatever.
I read a book about five years ago ("The Swerve: How the World became Modern", by Stephan Greenblatt) that described an amazing book written by Lucretius in the 1st century, based on the writings of a Greek, Epicurus, which have been entirely lost. All that is known about Epicurus is based on the impact he had on contemporaries whose writings about him survived. Probably the last actual writings of Epicurus disappeared with the burning of library at Alexandria, but no one can be sure.
This book was eye-opening for me. I am an engineer by trade and training, but was always interested in philosophy and took many classes in it while in college. Even so, I had developed a very false notion of what Epicurus was all about (the word "Epicurean" today could hardly be any further from his thought). You can form your own opinions. But this book by Lucretous - a poem, really - summarizing Epicurus' thought almost didn't make it to modernity - which is what The Swerve is primarily about. It had been systematically rooted out and burned over a period of centuries by the Catholic Church, as containing highly heretical ideas (which was true, actually). It dwindled down to private collections in the third and forth centuries and eventually disappeared altogether. Mention of it was made in other non-banned works, but no known copies of it existed anywhere. Around the time of Machiavelli, a minor Italian bureaucrat lost his position when his patron fell out of power; he had to leave Italy for awhile to "lay low" until the political climate changed again. He wandered around France and Germany, visiting bookstores because he was also a bibliophile. I can't remember exactly where he found it now - it was in some German rural backwater I think - in a monastery where the monks would dutifully copy out scrolls and manuscripts which they often couldn't even understand. At this monastery they had been preserving a copy of Epicurus' poem for centuries without knowing what it was. The Italian had an inkling that it was the lost work of Epicurus and made a hand copy of it which he got back to Italy with eventually. Now, of course, you can't walk into a decent used bookstore that doesn't have numerous translations of "On the Nature of Things." Close call.
But there are so many other works that have been lost. We have - what? - only one volume that was ultimately preserved of Aeschylus - dozens more were talked about but lost. They were apparently alphabetized in this "complete works of" set and we got one of the later volumes. Sophocles - we have a ridiculously small subset of his plays. Euripides is a little better, but still, many lost works.
For me, the preservation of books and other materials for future generations - distant future generations - is what libraries should primarily be about. Not welcome centers for homeless people. Not collections of only politically correct books (of any politics). But I have my biases I am sure.
This would make a great piece for the Substack. We welcome guest contributors!
Please reach out to hxlibsstack@gmail.com if you are interested in contributing a guest post!!
Different types of libraries are for different purposes. The big academic libraries etc are supposed to preserve materials. The small public libraries are also community centers. I rely on my public library for baby playgroups and story times. But yes, there should be some libraries out there preserving material for future generations.
The definitions of political terms are so all over the place that they often lose their meaning. I think that libraries are often at the mercy of local politics and donors. Like public schooling, they have the potential to be liberatory or to be tools of indoctrination. Libraries may serve the people, but who is running the libraries and setting the library agendas? It's the professional class. They think that they know what is right for the people. There's a long history of libraries serving a moralizing role within society. I wonder why Carnegie donated all those library buildings?
The Information Disorder report from the Atlantic Council has been getting some attention lately from those that are following the Twitter Files. I remember reading this when it came out and cringing at their recommendations for libraries. Another place to make sure the "correct" version of information literacy is spread and promoted.
Populism gets maligned and called "right wing" and fascist, but that's ridiculous. Thomas Frank wrote an excellent book on the history of populism: The People, NO.
I have heard Thomas Frank speak about that book. I also cringe when populism is painted as "fascist."
I hadn't heard anything about the Information Disorder report's recommendations for libraries-- do you have a link?
I think the political distinctions get very fuzzy when examined closely.
Here's the Aspen Institute's Information Disorder report: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/commission-on-information-disorder-final-report/ (oops...this is the one I meant, not the Atlantic Council)
I went into my old notes for this because I remember being a little too honest with library administration...my boss had asked me if there was any potential for the library to respond to the accompanying CFP (https://www.aspentechpolicyhub.org/information-disorder-prize-competition/), so I reviewed the report and the recommendation for libraries and came up with this observation at the time:
...the report appears to call for elite-driven top-down approaches to controlling information disorder through a federal government-run central domestic propaganda organization (e.g., solutions for a "comprehensive federal approach" and a "public restoration fund") more so than civic/information literacy education.
Good response, thanks.
I’d like to see a link too. Sounds like what I have seen...there has been a lot of movement towards using libraries as propaganda distributors cloaked as “your trusted government” ... it’s like they think we all forget there is always an opposing view and just because one group is voted in it doesn’t make them the everlasting knowers of The One Great Truth.
Structuralism--one of the philosophical bases for so-called "wokeness"--inspires your average library school professor these days towing the average library school party line to insist that, like, no library is, like, neutral and stuff. It isn't, like, possible! And to a certain extent, they're right.
Making a balanced collection of information available and offering a variety of services without conscious, purposeful regard for the backgrounds, experiences or statuses of those served is itself a “political” act under the purposely and consciously non-partisan ideological umbrellas of “intellectual freedom” and “public accommodation.” A decently run public library is a monument and temple to liberalism, with that word used in the same sense as "liberal arts."
Here in Iowa, the irony of the prevailing "conflict" is apparent every day. The most vocal proponents of policies, viewpoints etc. that we have come to identify as "woke" are really no more realistic, pro-human, pro-individual, pro-science and certainly, certainly no LESS anti-intellectual than the most convinced religious zealots. They are both easily identifiable as definitively ILLIBERAL. Scratch either one slightly and venom comes out; they both nastily badmouth each other, of course, but they also berate liberals as milquetoasts, wimps, fence-sitters. Liberals of the "liberty" sort bother them both very much. Google: "Liberals get the bullet, too." Liberals threaten the business of both the anti-Little House on the Prairie crowd and the anti-books-in which-a-preteen-character-admits-to-having-masturbated-with-a-same-sex-friend crowd. Both gangs think the name of the game is CONTROLLING INFORMATION, thus OPINIONS, thus PEOPLE.
As for "fascism," in the last 20 years we have seen the diaphanous, ill-defined (but intuitively recognizable) Spirit of Fascism do a thorough victory lap through the important aspects of American public life. It inspired right-leaners to avenge a terror attack many times over, killing and displacing hundreds and thousands if not millions of people (most probably not that interested in global politics or Jihadism) and stomping on our domestic civil liberties with spiked golf shoes . Then, less than 20 years later, it inspired left-leaners to regard their neighbors as a lost and ignorant "them" based on their skeptical response to what has amounted to a not-very-well-understood flu-like illness of obviously exaggerated threat OR their unwillingness to put the right yard sign signaling the right virtue at the right time OR having had the audacity to NOT VOTE LIKE THEM. And think back, if you're old enough: there has been/is an increasing demand for UNTHINKING, REFLEXIVE PERFORMANCE and punishment for refusing, two of the defining characteristics of fascism. "Clap for the troops," "Sing along to 'Proud to Be an American' for the third time this school year," "Wear the mask," "Kneel for {INSERT VICTIM OF THIS WEEK'S NEWS CYCLE}," "Say something snarky about Trump," "Pretend to Believe What We Say."
Something to consider, fellow ALA critics, is the wildly differing responses of our professional organization to what amounts to two different but equally virulent strains of threat to intellectual freedom and privacy. Consider the relatively vigorous response to the PATRIOT Act circa 2003 versus the equal but opposite compliance-comfortable response to the "Questioning the CDC is Dangerous Disinformation!" censorship that was obvious and pervasive in our field.
To me, it is hard to say if libraries have a natural political orientation. My first answer is that it depends on the ideology of the librarians. A library managed by "woke" librarians will be different than libraries managed by liberal, populist, or conservative librarians.
But my second deeper answer is that a public library open to everyone is more naturally liberal in the broad sense defined by Nieman. Public libraries value the power of the written word and welcome anyone to come in and try to figure things out for themselves. They encourage intellectual independence and have faith that anyone can achieve it -- which go along with the commitment to universalism and progress.
Thus, the recent trend in librarianship to distrust the public's ability to think for themselves (b/c they are too easily fooled by misinformation, blinded by white privilege, or corrupted by the deep, structural forms of oppression that distort the very perception of reality for the average person trapped in our society) does seem to be at odds with the fundamental purpose of building libraries for the public.