[On September 19th, 1985, Congress held hearings over the concept of parental advisory warnings for music. So this week, I’ve commemorated that complex anniversary by highlighting histories of censorship in America, leading up to this weekend post on how we can respond to the very fraught state of these issues in 2025.]
On three
ways we can challenge the seemingly ubiquitous attempts to censor books,
educators, and the truth itself here in 2025.
I’ve been
writing about our moment’s attacks on teachers and librarians for a
good while now, both in this
blog and in other settings like my Saturday
Evening Post Considering History column.
I can’t imagine that I need to tell any reader of this blog that those attacks
have only gotten more frequent and worse here in the first year of Trump 2.0. So
rather than dwell on that incredibly frustrating fact, I wanted in this weekend
post to briefly highlight three ways we can challenge this trend.
1)
Community:
I really love that hyperlinked June news story on how the residents of a Minnesota
school district restricted and stopped the School Board’s attempts to remove
certain books (in order to appease the MAGA types, natch). If we take the
arguments for censorship at face value—and I do believe at least some of these
folks do genuinely want to protect kids—then they are all about doing what’s
best for their communities. So what better way could there be to challenge
those efforts than by communities stepping up to make the opposite case?
2)
Creating:
That’s not the only way we can do so, though, and I also love that hyperlinked piece
from historian Averill Earls (excerpted from the Conclusion to her book Love
in the Lav) on how 20th century Irish
writer John Broderick kept writing through all attempts to censor his
works. Too often the direct targets of our censorship efforts can’t fight back—they’re
historical figures and communities, authors who are no longer with us, and so
on. But one thing we can all do is continue creating, writing, sharing our
voices and works, and you best believe I’m going to keep doing my part of that,
here and everywhere.
3)
The Constitution: Creating in and of itself is
a good bit of the battle, but of course the content of what we write and say
and share is important to consider as well. This past Wednesday we celebrated
our latest Constitution Day, an occasion on which I’ve had the chance to share
my public scholarly thoughts multiple times in
the past. The U.S. Constitution only directly addresses issues relevant to
censorship in (to my knowledge) one spot, although it’s a very prominent one:
the 1st
Amendment and its protection of “the freedom of speech” from government laws
and interference. But I also would argue that we can link that first amendment
to the Constitution’s other first thing, its Preamble,
and in so doing can make the case that nothing is more important to the
Preamble’s many goals for “We the People”—and most of all “securing the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”—than our ability to learn,
in all settings and forms, without our texts and truths being censored.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Censorship histories or current events you’d highlight?
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