Traditionally, higher education has been regarded as a space of intellectual freedom. The secular university is a special continuum that allows for a vacuum of art and thought, and is typically exempt from religious or ideological persecution. With our recent administration change, this truism is veiled in speculation. Under Donald Trump, the academic sphere is undergoing vast changes, and none of them promising. There is an undercurrent of fear among faculty and students that if they say the wrong thing, or are caught (currently or post-facto) protesting against human rights infractions, or against the administration as a whole, they will be scrutinized and, depending on ethnic status, even deported. It is not new news that ICE has been roaming around college campuses in an unsubtle way to threaten and instill fear in students enacting their right to free speech.
As this particularly frightening political climate escalates it is not just one aspect of our First Amendment that is threatened, but many. There is a war being waged on what we read, which again, is nothing new, but as we inevitably become accustomed to our conditions, we can forget how these slow and precise actions contribute to a much larger disease; when the leader of a democratic society reverts to censorship in order to adhere to a certain narrative that silences any opposition, they have irrevocably severed the ties of democracy and are steadfast towards autocracy.
Jeanette Bradley is part of the national organization, Authors Against Book Bans (AABB) which, since August, has had a chapter in RI. Bradley says, “The organization is very new, and something I am really passionate and care deeply about. It’s important for kids to have high-quality literature and high-quality representation.” Bradley is also stewardess of The Rhode Island Freedom to Read Act, a bill that is awaiting vote in congress. The bill was created in response to the uptick in book banning, as a statistic in the bill highlights: “Nationwide, documented book challenges have increased over 675% since 2020. (American Library Association).” Bradley says, “The RI Freedom to Read Act protects librarians and their work, and is protecting our freedom of speech rights to write and publish.”
Since Trump’s Jan. 29th executive order to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion materials in grades kindergarten through 12, children’s books have solely been targeted, but in early April, as stated in The Boston Globe, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegesth’s office told the Naval Academy to apply that order to the school even though it is a college.”
Bradley relates, “Up until this point, for the last 5 years, these book bans have been under the guise of protecting children. This is the argument they are making. There’s no children attending the Naval Academy; this is a very different type of censorship.”
Following the order the Nimitz Library in the Academy removed 381 books from its shelves, including work from four Brown University professors. The books from Brown academics were Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France 1690-1715 by Lewis C.Seifert, Impressionist Subjects: Gender, Interiority, and Modernist Fiction in England, by Tamar Katz, Cook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court by Nicole Gonzalez VanCleve, and The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism by Rosalind S. Chou and Joe R. Feagin.
Upon closer inspection of these titles, and various others that were pulled, it seems strange that they were removed. What threat does a scholarly work about gender and sexuality in 17th century France pose to current US Naval Academy students? Or modernist fiction in Impressionist England? Tamar Katz, author of the latter, comments, “I think they did an AI search on anything that has to do with race or gender, that’s the only reason I can think of. But my book is about gender in a very specific subsection of experiential literature. This is the kind of haphazardness that we have come to expect from recent activities, which is just to say the current administration is doing a slip-shod job.”
Bradley also believes it was an AI job, and because of that it deprives the US Naval Academy of essential reading. She read the whole list of books banned and found the results surprising and ironic. For example, one of them was on the needs for diverse children’s book literature, another was about leadership and management skills, and one on gender and culture in Afghanistan. Bradly says, “I want people who are training to be in our US Navy to read these books! These are important topics.”
Katz agrees, “What’s being done is not done in good faith so they can be as sloppy as they like.” The books being censored are not carefully examined and read by a committee, and then determined ineligible or eligible; they are being spat through a robotic, uncritical system and pulled for tag words, much like running a simple Google engine search. That is a very lackadaisical way to treat something as important as our freedom of press.
Nicole Gonzalez VanCleve, author of the book on Cook County, finds it alarming that the administration is targeting academic spheres. She says, “It feels like we’ve entered a new era where the current administration is labeling ideas as dangerous. It is really a threat to the free speech rights of students and adults everywhere.” VanCleve also agrees that it seems like the ban was spurred by an AI search engine, but her book, because it is on the social study of racism and abuse in America’s largest criminal courts, can find eerie parallels in today’s system of internal corruption. She believes that “one of the most alarming things exposed is that many of the books that were banned revolve around abuses of power, and how those prejudices can be weaponized to create harm in a society. We haven’t seen books on this list that concern white supremacy. For example, Hitler’s Mein Kampf was not banned. We can only deduce that this administration sees those kinds of books as acceptable. I believe we should be having a moral discussion about this; what does it say that we are allowing hateful texts and disallowing books that show how prejudices can harm? That, in some ways, is more revealing; take notice of the danger in that.”
Bradley, Katz, and VanCleve all share similar concerns about the future and freedom of our academic spaces. Katz says she is “enormously worried about the future of free speech in general. Academic freedom has entered the spotlight in particular because it is a place where the government has obvious financial leverage.” The government, if a university does not adhere to their rules, can cut funding for medical or other research projects. Katz believes this is a big threat, and she is worried. “They are going to do more of it. But we are still at a point where institutions, as well as individuals, can push back and say no.” She is impressed by her students and hopeful that the skills they are taught in her class will help them thoughtfully react to situations in productive ways, rather than just exhibiting a knee-jerk reaction. “What I love about literature and teaching literature is that when you actually pay attention to what a particular novel is saying, you wind up with conclusions much more nuanced. I have felt the classroom is a really encouraging space for that kind of self-discovery.”
VanCleve shares a story that happened to her while she was teaching: “I was teaching a class on mass incarceration in America. My students have read numerous books, and they have also read my book. When I told them my book was banned they were silent, and then broke into applause. This to me speaks of a new generation that is unafraid and angry at what they’re seeing in this political climate. They are applauding the idea that thinkers can create ideas so bold that they can be seen as dangerous.”
Both Maya Angelo and Toni Morrison are names on the list. VanCleve sums up this experience with a quote from Toni Morrison on a letter the famous writer had framed above her toilet: “I have a little framed document in my bathroom, a letter from, I think Texas Bureau of Corrections, saying that Paradise was banned from the prison because it might incite a riot. And I thought, how powerful is that? I could tear up the whole place!” •
Photo: Authors Against Book Bans gathering at the State House. By Mike Ryan
