Make Book Bans Boring Again

Heated rhetoric around library book challenges and cancel culture obscures an important fact: censorship is broadly unpopular, and people love free expression.

Photo by Alice Hampson on Unsplash

The good news in a year of very bad news about censorship is that it’s not mainstream at all. Free expression—not censorship—is mainstream.

Censorship is a national crisis, if libraries and free speech organizations are to be believed.

PEN America’s April 2024 report, Banned in the USA: Narrating the Crisis, documents a nationwide surge in school book bans in fall 2023. They count 4,349 bans in the fall semester, more than double the number recorded in the previous spring report, and a larger number of bans than occurred in the entire 2022-23 school year. PEN America’s report concludes on an uplifting, if combative, note, documenting efforts to “fight[] back in creative ways.”

The American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom (ALA OIF)’s March 2024 report counts 4,240 unique titles identified in 938 reported book challenges during 2023. They highlight a 92% increase in challenges to public library materials from the previous year, and invite freedom to read advocates to “join us in the fight against censorship.”

As a broader indicator of censorious cancel culture, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) issued an April 2024 warning that “deplatforming attempts are surging in 2024,” noting that at the current pace, there will be a nearly 60% increase in the number of ideologically-motivated disinvitations and event disruptions compared to last year.

Such reports inform the view expressed by writer Matthew Giagnorio in an April 2024 opinion piece decrying the termination of Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL) library CEO Cathy Simpson for her advocacy of viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom: “attempts to ban and censor have become mainstream.”

But the good news in a year of very bad news about censorship is that this isn’t true at all. Free expression—not censorship—is mainstream.

Free Expression–Not Censorship–is Mainstream

Free expression enjoys robust support among Americans across the ideological spectrum. 

On the matter of book bans, for example, an April 2024 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 69% of respondents oppose individual school boards passing laws to ban and remove certain books from classrooms and school libraries, including 84% of Democrats, 71% of Independents, and 53% of Republicans. Similarly, in a nationwide May 2023 NPR/Ipsos poll, 69% of participants oppose state governments legislating book bans. A national USA TODAY/Ipsos poll from March 2023 found an even greater number—76%—of respondents oppose state laws to ban books from school classrooms and libraries, including 86% of Democrats, 78% of Independents, and 66% of Republicans. And in a March 2022 Hart Research / North Star Opinion survey for the American Library Association, 71% of U.S. voters surveyed were opposed to library book bans, including 75% of Democrats, 70% of Republicans, and 58% of Independents.

The public is also ready to cancel cancel culture. 

In a nationwide April 2023 survey, 64% of respondents agreed that the statement, “our country needs to reduce political correctness and cancel culture,” described their views. Notably, in their report on the survey titled “A Country on Fire,” NBC News emphasized the political divide on the issue: 67% of Republicans compared to only 19% of Democrats concurred with the need to tame cancel culture. Similarly, a June 2021 New York Times/Ipsos study found that 84% of respondents held a disfavorable view of cancel culture, including 94% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 73% of Democrats.

And people love (LOVE) freedom of expression.

A March 2024 AP-NORC poll reveals that 97% of people think free speech is important to America’s national identity. (The remaining 3% sit comfortably in the survey’s margin of error.) 99% of respondents to an August 2021 Knight-Ipsos survey identified freedom of speech as an important right, second only to equal protection under the law, and 95% of participants in a September 2021 PRRI survey declared that believing in freedom of speech and other individual freedoms is important to being truly American. Among party affiliates, 98% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats viewed belief in free speech as essential to being truly American.

(Dis)Counting Censorship

We can also quantify library censorship in proportion to other library activities. WorldCat, dubbed “the world’s largest library catalog,” indexes 405 million books in its records. This means that the unprecedented acceleration of library book challenges to more than 4,000 in 2023 impacted roughly .001% of the books available to U.S. library patrons via their local libraries or interlibrary loan services. If we narrow our denominator to the more than 40 million books held by the Library of Congress, the scope of impact is .01%.

ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom counted 1,247 challenges to library resources or programming. Assuming each challenge impacts a unique library (which isn’t actually the case but provides a generous estimate for our analysis), this would mean approximately 1% of all libraries in the U.S. were hit with a challenge.

Let’s further assume that each of the 1,247 challenges represents the work of a unique individual (which also isn’t actually the case but again provides a generous estimate for our analysis). Since Americans average more than a billion visits to public libraries alone each year, this means that challenges account for .0001% of annual individual library interactions.

Another way to describe library book challenges is that 99% of libraries never receive a challenge, 99.99% of books are never challenged, and 99.9999% of library users never try to censor material.

My intention is not to discount the very real impacts of a surge in library censorship campaigns. PEN America has it exactly right that 

behind every number, there is a deeper story: the narratives being censored from pages, the overworked librarians and teachers, the authors whose work has been maligned, and the students who see their identities and their opportunities to learn about other experiences and histories swept from shelves.

I also think cases like Cathy Simpson’s at NOTL and that of Rich Boulet at the Blue Hill Public Library in Maine—who was left twisting in the wind when the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom shamefully declined to support the library’s consensus decision to add a donated copy of Irreversible Damage to its collection despite reconsideration requests, online onslaughts, and public harassment—are important stories to tell.

There is also an argument to be made about the silent censorship of library selection practices that determine which books are added—and, more to the point, not added—to library collections in the first place. (I previously reported that so-called banned and challenged books are sometimes available at orders-of-magnitude-greater rates than their contemporaries conveying more conservative and traditionalist views—findings in line with those reported by The Free Press, RealClear Education, CATO Institute, and Boston University’s Wheelock Educational Policy Center). My purpose here is only to present the issue of library book banning in the broader context of the very good work that libraries do in our communities, the very positive ways in which almost all people engage with their local library, and the near universal American embrace of free expression.

I want to Make Book Bans Boring Again.

Make Counterspeech, Not War

If the numbers are any indication, the rhetoric around library book bans is not working. While it’s de rigueur to characterize library book bans as a flashpoint in the broader culture wars (and indeed, 69% of respondents to a May 2023 Quinnipiac poll attributed book bans to broader politics rather than to the content of the books), marshaling these martial metaphors has done little to secure victory. If anything, it is likely to further entrench ideological extremists of all stripes in their Manichean quest to save the world from words they don’t like. 

I’m calling on libraries and free speech advocates to desist with fighting words and resist with uniting words.

Steven Ward makes the excellent case for de-escalation techniques as an important practice in promoting intellectual freedom. He cites the New South Wales Health Department’s LOWLINE de-escalation model as useful for library workers fielding complaints, reconsideration requests, and challenges to library materials:

• Listen to what the issue is and the person's concerns.

• Offer reflective comments to show that you have heard what their concerns are.

• Wait until the person has released their frustration and explained how they are feeling.

• Look and maintain appropriate eye contact to connect with the person.

• Incline your head slightly, to show you are listening and give you a non-threatening posture.

• Nod to confirm that you are listening and have understood.

• Express empathy to show you have understood.

In a forthcoming feature article for the ALA’s Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy, I suggest additional practical strategies that library workers can take to respond constructively to complaints. These steps respect the community member’s First Amendment-protected right to criticize (though not censor) library holdings and programming, and redirect the interaction toward providing alternate materials that interest them. This includes information services, such as a reader’s advisory consultation (“Can I help you locate materials that would be of interest to you and your family?”), and soliciting suggestions, books, or donations that help expand the variety of viewpoints that the library has on offer. The National Coalition Against Censorship has additional tips for community advocates in their Book Challenge Resource Center. In many cases, engaging with a concerned community member in good faith (even when they’re not acting in good faith) by listening to and acknowledging their criticism will be disarming in and of itself, and can transform a would-be challenge into a library check-out.

I’m of the pragmatic view that book challenges and other censorious activities are something we’re going to have to live with. I’ve tried to demonstrate that they actually constitute an infinitesimally small fraction of the overall activities of libraries, but I don’t think they’ll ever go away entirely. I think debates about the right to free expression and the appropriateness of certain forms of expression in various venues is an inevitable, perhaps even healthy, component of living in a free and democratic society. And while I agree in sentiment, I actually find the idea of “ending censorship once and for all” to be totalitarian in its own right.

But I think we can do more to make censorship boring, and there’s nothing more boring than bureaucracy.

Libraries should have sound policies in place regarding materials selection, suggestions, donations, and reconsideration practices, including any paperwork that community members must submit in order for their reconsideration request to be processed. I also encourage libraries to provide maximum transparency about and access to their governance structures, including board meetings, meeting agendas, and minutes, and to ask library critics to demonstrate knowledge of or engagement with these outlets as part of the reconsideration process. While my intent is not to create an undue burden on community members who wish to express criticism of library practices in good faith, I do want to find a way to discourage “robobanning” whereby libraries receive copy/paste attempts to censor a hundred titles or more.

I also think libraries and our allies in free speech organizations and the press need to rethink our rhetoric about book bans and other forms of censorship. The war of words isn’t working, and to the extent that our us-vs.-them rhetoric further polarizes a public that is otherwise largely united in favor of free speech, than any gains we do make will be Pyrrhic victories. Our yearly ritual of tallying library book challenges which then make the rounds in the mainstream press also creates a perverse incentive for organized groups to game the numbers and jockey for position on the leader board of censorship. Instead of putting the spotlight on the minuscule fraction of library activities that are represented by bans and challenges (which occupied more than a third of the 2024 State of America’s Libraries Report), let’s highlight the larger truth: censorship is unpopular. Public sentiment is on our side. Americans treasure our freedom of expression. And the library has something for everyone.

Keep Free Speech Weird

Social progress comes from the margins. — Jonathan Rauch

Despite making the case that free expression is very normal to the average American by today’s standards, I agree with FIRE President and CEO and Eternally Radical Idea writer Greg Lukianoff that free speech is a remarkable anomaly by historical standards. In this 2022 interview for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR)’s FAIR Perspectives podcast, Lukianoff asks, 

What’s the weirder thing: human social conformity pressures, or freedom of speech? Historically, freedom of speech is by far the weird innovation. It doesn’t come naturally to us. It’s fragile…. Freedom of speech has to be actively explained. 

This hearkens to Jonathan Rauch’s remarks at the 2023 Voices for Liberty Summit on Civil Rights and Free Speech, where he also advocated for free speech as a cultural legacy that must be taught. He movingly recounts the transformation of social justice with respect to gay marriage within his own lifetime—progress he attributes to free expression. He concludes with a particular appeal to other members of minoritized communities for the necessity of free speech to advancing their own social causes. He outlines five dimensions of minority advocacy for free expression:

• Recognizing that the problem with hate speech is the hate, not the speech. (“Trying to deal with hate by banning hate speech is like trying to deal with global warming by breaking all the thermometers.”)

• Words aren’t violence. (Rauch makes the point that minorities of all people know what actual violence is: “When someone smashes me on the head with a 2x4, I do not get a choice about whether to reframe the cracks in my skull.”)

• Don’t “protect” us [from harmful speech]. (Rauch outlines how the ‘fragile minority’ trope is not only patronizing, but also extends the supremacist view that minorities are weak and inferior.)

• Embrace the burden. (“Minorities, people on the edge of society, are always the first to see injustice. Social progress comes from the margins. And yes, it is a burden to be in the position of calling out injustice and educating society. But this is also a gift.”)

• We [gays and other minorities] were canceled. Never forget! (“We were not fighting for the right and the ability to turn the tables and make the other side suffer as we did. We were fighting for the right of all Americans to live out and express their authentic identities, especially where we disagreed with it.”)

Rauch implores people to teach the value of free speech by telling the stories of gay liberation and other social justice achievements that are grounded in the exercise of free expression.

So while we’re making book bans boring, let’s also make free speech enthralling. Look for the role of free expression in every inch of social advancement and tell those stories. Teach your children well to not only exercise, but also enjoy their freedom of expression—and to respect others’ right to do likewise. Treat the ‘eternally radical idea’ of free speech with the reverence it deserves. Be thankful you’re alive to see the historical anomaly of free speech in all its funky glory. Let’s create opportunities to exercise and celebrate free expression in our libraries, and invite our communities to Keep Free Speech Weird.

Sarah Hartman-Caverly is a reference and instruction librarian and co-moderator of HxLibraries.

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