On a special episode of the 5 Things podcast: The conversation about book bans in schools has hit a fever pitch, and there are worries that the same pressures to ban books are now spreading to public libraries too. Book bans often come from parent or community complaints. But who actually has the power to restrict books? To get to the heart of one of America’s growing culture wars, Nadine Farid Johnson, the Managing Director of PEN America Washington and Free Expressions Programs, joins the 5 Things podcast to describe what's at stake in this fight.

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Taylor Wilson:

Hello and welcome to 5 Things. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is October 11, 2023, and this is a special episode of 5 Things. The conversation about book Bans in schools has hit a fever pitch and there are worries that the same pressures to ban books are now spreading to public libraries, too. Book bans often come from parent or community complaints, but who actually has the power to restrict books? To get to the heart of one of America's growing culture wars, I'm now joined by Nadine Farid Johnson. She's the managing director of PEN America Washington and free expressions programs. PEN America aims to protect free expression through literature in the US. Nadine, thanks for joining me.

Nadine Farid Johnson:

Taylor, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Taylor Wilson:

So just starting here, why are these book bans picking up steam now and what does it say about this moment that we're living in?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

It's a great question, Taylor. PEN America has been collecting information and these reports of rapidly increasing book bans all across the country for the past two years. The numbers just do keep going up. Why it's happening now, it really seems to have picked up steam over the past couple of years in different communities. First, we had a few school districts and then we began to see these groups taking hold where they would be talking with folks in their communities. It actually grew into hacking legislation that's also affecting these bans.

Taylor Wilson:

What are the types of books that were often seeing being banned at this point, and just how many books are we talking about?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

Since we started tracking public school book bans in July of 2021, we have recorded more than 5,800 banns all across the country, and that includes over 3,300 bans that were just banned in this past school year. So the kinds of books that are being banned, oftentimes these books have to do with issues of race, with racism. They will have a character that is LGBTQ+ or deal with a theme that is LGBTQ+. Those are the majority of the books that we're seeing that are banned.

Taylor Wilson:

Who stands to benefit from banning books and who pushes for these bans in the first place?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

Well, in terms of who tends to benefit, I would say no one, actually. It is something to see in our communities. When you see students not having access to literature, not having access to information, that's a detriment to our students, a detriment to our communities, detriment to our educators as well, especially those who have made the conscious decision to include these materials in the school library. Who's pushing for, we're seeing different groups that have been formed, often community groups. Sometimes you will have one or two individuals in a community, and they're the ones who are really behind a particular push. You could have individuals who are challenging hundreds of books in a particular school district. So it really does vary.

Taylor Wilson:

Putting you on the spot here a little, but is there ever a good faith reason to ban or restrict books?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

Let's think about this in terms of what we're talking about. We're talking about a ban, right? A ban is censorship. It is the government coming in and whatever level you want to talk about and saying, "We are not going to permit this information to be made available to our students." That is not good for anyone. Now, are there situations in which a particular parent may not want their particular student to avail themselves of certain books? Sure, and parents absolutely have the right to do that. I'm a parent. There are certain books that maybe I don't want my kids reading at a certain point in their lives, but the difference is I'm not going to the school board and saying, because I don't want my kid reading this, no kids can read this. And that's really the big difference.

Taylor Wilson:

Parents are at the heart of so much of this, as you've mentioned. A lot of these bans stem from parental concerns. At what point are parents given too much power over this and what's the line and how do we determine this line going forward?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

So I think it's really important here to look at how these bans are coming about because oftentimes what will happen is, as I've mentioned, you'll have one or two community members who will put forth a challenge to a whole host of books, and then it's up to the school to be able to review the challenges, to review the books that are being challenged, and to make a determination oftentimes by committee, that will include an educator, sometimes a parent or other community member, possibly a school librarian, and they'll make a determination. If there is that kind of process, then we can see a situation in which there would be a measured, neutral established means to determine the best information to be kept in a library.

But what we're seeing now is that with all of these bans and the dozens of challenges happening at once, that no librarian can keep up. And so you will have what we call wholesale bans where books are just removed from the shelves pending some kind of review, that oftentimes could take months, if not an entire school year to take place. And so we don't actually have that kind of measured discussion that we're talking about in terms of deciding who has the final word.

Taylor Wilson:

A website that's been increasingly on my radar, Nadine, is Book Looks. What is Book Looks and how does this site help fuel book ban requests?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

So Book Looks actually takes different excerpts from books and will talk about the content of a book. I think it's really important to focus on what's happening a lot of these times in that when you see these challenges, you'll see Book X has this kind of character and they have this kind of scene and that's bad for kids, or it's indoctrination, you often hear that. But what we're missing here when we look at these books, let's look at them holistically. What is the context of the writing? What is the author trying to convey? What kind of experiences are they reflecting? Could there be a situation in which a student in a school district has a similar experience and wants to be able to relate to something by reading?

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Let's shift. We've talked some about schools, and this has obviously been at the heart of a lot of issues at the local level and state level, but efforts to ban books, Nadine, are now expanding to public libraries, too. What's happening here, what's the latest?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

It's not only an effort to ban books on libraries, Taylor, what we're seeing is actually a wholesale effort to defund public libraries. And this is really important because what it does is it affects different communities. Oftentimes, what we heard in the early days of this, the past couple of years, is that, if a student can't get a book in a school library, they can always go to their public library. And now we're hearing, they can't get it at the public library. They can always get off Amazon or at Barnes and Noble or what have you. And let's be really clear here, the fact that there is a violation of the First Amendment in terms of an act of censorship, the fact that you can get something from Amazon does not mitigate that violation, right?

And so what we see happening with these efforts at the public library is that you'll have individuals questioning a pride display, for example, at a public library, saying that they don't want books with certain content to be made available, saying they want to put them behind a particular shelf, and they are really stigmatizing the books in the public library to the detriment of the entire community.

Taylor Wilson:

Are any communities being disproportionately affected by book bans, either in school or public libraries?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

In our last report, we actually found that fully 40% of the bans that were happening in schools were happening in Florida. We are seeing similar efforts in terms of public libraries and other states. Alabama has a number of public library efforts. Louisiana, Georgia, Indiana has a few as well as Virginia. And oftentimes these do happen to be in rural areas, which of course is another issue because you are limiting the access that students might have or children might have, or adults in the community might have as well. Let's not forget that the public library serves everyone in these communities, so they'll have less access to these books.

Taylor Wilson:

The debate on book bans recently hit Capitol Hill as well with a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Nadine, where does this conversation stand right now in a political context?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

Well, we've heard it from a number of the presidential candidates. This is something that's been talked about on both sides of the political aisle. And we have, as you know now, has been, I think this is the third hearing now that's touched upon it in Congress. Most of the legislation that we see is actually coming out at the state level. There have been some efforts at the federal level to really figure out how best to address these issues, but right now, it's still a conversation and we are seeing really, there's no meeting in the middle right now, unfortunately. And it really is disconcerting because irrespective, again, of how one feels about a particular book, when we see an effort to disavow entire swath of literature to make it so that children cannot access these books and oftentimes can't see themselves in these books, as I mentioned, so many of these books have to do with issues of race.

They have a protagonist of color, or they'll have a protagonist who's LGBTQ. Those are important stories for students to see themselves and also to have empathy for others. So what we're really seeing is, unfortunately, it's not a meeting of the minds politically, but I am hopeful that as people start to recognize what is actually happening here and the censorship that is the heart of it, that we'll start to see some movement.

Taylor Wilson:

What would you say are the biggest risks with book bans?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

So I think the biggest risks actually come from what we're doing to educate our children in the US. If you look at the Supreme Court Jurisprudence, it talks about why we have First Amendment rights in the classroom. What they talk about is the fact that we are educating our children to become adults in a pluralistic democratic society. And when you don't have access to information, when you don't understand history, when you don't see yourself in a book or have empathy for someone else's experience, all of those things are to the detriment of our students, detriments to our community, a detriment to our society as they grow up and become those members of our pluralistic democracy.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Let's try to look at the glass half full to wrap up here, Nadine. What are the solutions here? Who's fighting back? And for those listening, how can Americans take this fight into their own hands?

Nadine Farid Johnson:

I actually do look at the glass as half full, and I'm really glad you asked this. There are a number of organizations who are coming together and recognizing that there is power in community, right? If this is happening in your backyard, look to that backyard, figure out what's happening, be part of your community, go to your school board meeting and talk with your neighbors, right? This is something that is happening, again, all across the country, and it is something that people are recognizing is actually not beneficial to our students, to our schools, to our educators, to our parents, and it goes on, right?

I also think it's important to recognize that parents do have an important role to play in their kids' education. So talk to your students' teacher, talk to your kids' librarian. Actually come together and educate the students holistically, what we're supposed to be doing, in partnership, not at odds. The other thing I'll say is that this is actually far from the first time that we have seen book bans take hold in some sort of feverish way in US history. It happened in the McCarthy era, it happened prior to that, happened in the Jim Crow era, it happened in the seventies and eighties, but every single time the First Amendment has won out, and I have every reason to believe that will happen again now.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, great perspective. Nadine Farid Johnson, thank you so much for your insight on this, on a growing issue.

Nadine Farid Johnson:

Thank you so much.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks to our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green, for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson back tomorrow morning with another episode of 5 Things.