New Puritans in the World of Libraries
A reflection on Andrew Doyle’s assessment of censorship in libraries
In Andrew Doyle’s January 6th article on Quillette, Doyle describes what he calls “a puritanical assault on the English language” by the “new puritans” and implicates libraries and librarians in this attack.
Doyle notes the trends of attaching trigger warnings to texts, attributing harm to the written word, decolonizing libraries and librarians placing authors on watchlists. He writes that the role of librarian “seems to attract activists who are convinced that society can be re-engineered through censorship of the words we say and the books we read.”
This trend towards censorship by people from within the library profession was shown empirically in The Canadian Federation of Library Association’s (CFLA) latest Intellectual Freedom Challenges Survey Report that listed 2021 as a record setting year where they “saw the largest number of complaints initiated by library staff in the history of the survey”. The report noted that another record was set in 2021 when “[o]ne title (Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier) was subject to more complaints than any other title in the history of the survey.” One wonders if these two records are perhaps related, especially when one reads the “Open Letter to the CFLA Board On Intellectual Freedom” signed by many library workers across Canada which specifically states that the signatories are not united behind the position statement written by the CFLA in response to the numerous challenges to Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage. The CFLA position statement supported libraries who upheld intellectual freedom by retaining Shrier’s book.
People should take note of the warning Doyle is giving. When librarians are signing letters en masse to censor authors’ books, deplatform speakers from taxpayer funded library spaces and advocate for prior restraint, people can do themselves a favor and take the librarians at their word: they want to decide what the public reads and who the public gets to hear speak. How will the public react to having their intellectual freedom robbed by people being paid to do so on the taxpayer dime?
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For further context on the state of censorship in Canadian libraries I recommend this article on Quillette written by Greg Barkovich. https://quillette.com/2022/02/06/watching-my-beloved-once-eclectic-library-become-just-another-bastion-of-orthodoxy/
Doyle wrote in that piece:
"During the past few years, we have seen a bizarre militancy from librarians who are keen to 'decolonise' their collections or berate people for their reading habits. I am not suggesting here that there has been some kind of conspiracy among ideologues to infiltrate libraries by stealth, but rather that the role seems to attract activists who are convinced that society can be re-engineered through censorship of the words we say and the books we read."
The bit about the profession attracting activists is truer and deeper than the writer understands. The profession of librarianship is one perfectly suited for the casual activist personality who must earn a living: government work, mostly indoors, largely sedentary, and it affords a veneer of intellectual legitimacy and reasonableness to even the most anti-intellectual/unthinkingly convinced ideological sorts. Just as it's never a surprise when hardcore right-wingers are cops or soldiers, it's never a surprise when left-wing slogans and sentiments dominate the t-shirts of the attendees at library conferences..