Banned Books Week in the Time of Repression

"This year's Banned Books Week (Oct. 5-11) comes at a moment when the threat of censorship is reaching alarming heights. According to a new report issued last week by PEN America, " Banned in the USA, 2024-2025," there were 22,810 instances of book banning in U.S. public schools from 2021 to 2025. As the coordinator of Chicago Banned Books Week, I can see a growing climate of fear where even some librarians are wary of promoting banned books."

"Ever since Banned Books Week was created by the American Library Association in 1982, higher education has mostly regarded it with a distant indifference. Those unfortunate librarians and schoolteachers had to deal with routine demands for book censorship. At colleges, for all of the threats to academic freedom, books seemed sacrosanct, and the primary danger was that students arrived on campus without being exposed to a diversity of literature."

"Of course, there have always been a few repressive colleges that banned books. In 2019, Franciscan University of Steubenville banned Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom because it speculated about the Virgin Mary's sex life. After initially defending academic freedom, the president reversed course and demoted the chair of the English Department for including the book in a seminar and then ordered the campus "to immediately review and revise our existing policy on academic freedom to prevent future use of scandalous materials.""

PEN America documented 22,810 instances of book banning in U.S. public schools between 2021 and 2025, and the climate of censorship has intensified. Librarians increasingly fear promoting banned books. Colleges historically treated books as sacrosanct despite episodic censorship, but conservative movements now press many institutions to remove materials addressing diversity, gender, and politics. Notable cases include Franciscan University of Steubenville demoting an English chair after banning Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom, and political interventions at New College in Florida that eliminated a Gender and Diversity Center and discarded library materials. These developments signal growing political interference and a mounting threat to academic freedom.

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