Stop Banning Books: Jonathan Friedman
September 29th, 2022
“Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gates.”
Jonathan Friedman is the director of free expression and education programs at PEN America. He oversees research, advocacy, and education related to academic freedom, educational gag orders, book bans, and general free expression in schools, colleges, and universities. We discuss the driving forces behind campaigns to ban books and silence teachers.
Education has always been political and a part of the culture war. We’re currently experiencing an eruption of citizen anger against schools, books, school librarians, and teachers for allegedly engaging in something dangerous. For example, anything about diversity and inclusion is labeled as critical race theory. Libraries were actually put inside schools to encourage literacy and development, civic engagement, and exploration that is very healthy for a society. Politicians are increasingly trying to label whatever they don't like in schools as something that should be censored, and there are efforts to defund or close public libraries.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Jonathan Friedman
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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Jonathan Friedman Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. For a free 14-day trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features, go to Shopify.com/hopeful.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:26] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos. Books are powerful. So powerful, in fact, that for almost as long as they've existed, people have tried to ban them for blasphemy, for indecency, for revolutionary thought. You know, our culture spends so much time talking about social media and Twitter spats and online disinformation that sometimes I think we can forget about the power of books. The culture wars are playing out in libraries and at school board meetings, and an ever-growing list of books and authors are being blacklisted. But book banning is never just about the books. So what can we understand about the state of our civil society and the future of our democracy? From the rising tides of bans in schools and other educational contexts? I'm joined by Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education programs at PEN America. He oversees research, advocacy and education related to academic freedom, educational gag orders, book bans, and general free expression in schools, colleges, and universities. And I just want to mention here that Future Hindsight is a proud supporter of PEN America. Jonathan, welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Jonathan Friedman: [00:01:58] Great to be here.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:59] So there's a long, long history of book banning. It's not new, but it does feel like the pace has picked up. According to data collected by your organization, 1,145 books have been banned by school districts across the United States between July 1st of 2021 and March 31st of 2022. Can you put that number into some kind of historical context for us? Is it high or is it just normal?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:02:28] Oh, nothing here is normal. We are living through a kind of eruption of citizen anger and an effort to kind of see schools and books and school librarians and teachers as somehow engaged in something dangerous for young
people. And that has birthed this effort to sanitize curriculum and to remove from school libraries any books that any parent objects to. We're seeing all kinds of new measures being put on school libraries and expected of school librarians. And it's a really wide chilling effect. We're a year into this process, into this, I don't know, dynamic movement that has generated tremendous energy around the country. Historically, the way that a book might be challenged in a school district might be from a parent who is thumbing through it at the breakfast table, finds it in a kid's knapsack and says, you know, maybe this book shouldn't be available to my child at their age, or a student comes home from school and is saying something at the dinner table that raises an alarm for a parent. What we are seeing is not that dynamic at all. Maybe in some cases that's part of it. But overall, around the country, there are groups that have organized some longstanding groups, some newer groups with essentially one of their key goals to remove books from schools. And so they're circulating lists of books longer and longer lists. They're sending those lists to districts. We have politicians jumping on the bandwagon also looking to investigate whether a list of 100 books is in any of the schools in the districts or areas that they serve. And so all of this is creating this climate in which any book that ends up on any one of these lists and again, these are hundreds long, is subject to new scrutiny, sometimes removal, sometimes banning. This is nothing like what you would have thought was going on around schools two, maybe three years ago. Book banning was a phenomenon, but it was not something that was taking place in, you know, 30 states around the country and certainly not at the pace or the scope and scale that it is now attaining.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:38] Yeah, it's really widespread now. It's kind of shocking. And I remember, you know, when you first told me about this project we met up years ago now talking about this, and I thought, who does that? And here we are. And I think at that time you were already predicting that, you know, these things can happen at any time. For whatever reason. It could just become like a wildfire in some sense. But tell us a little bit about what exactly a book ban is, because you mentioned that parents were like, oh, this is alarming. Why's my child talking about this? That's one thing. But what you're talking about is really something different, right, with the lists and everything. How is this different?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:05:15] I think we can focus here on the term banning. Why call it a book ban? Because a lot of the time it's what we're talking about are situations
where, yes, a person interested in a book might still be able to get it on Amazon or put it on a Kindle or get it at the public library. But book banning is a term used because it signals both the ways in which books might be prohibited but also attain a kind of banished status. And so the way that challenges are supposed to be handled in school districts is that when someone is upset about a book, the book doesn't immediately fly off the shelves because of a single complaint. There's a process in place. Maybe a mode of community engagement where a parent, a teacher, a librarian, maybe a student come together to read the book, talk about it, evaluate where it should be in the school. And what is meant to guide their thinking isn't what any one of those individuals personally feels about the content of the book. It's meant to be whether, you know, that book could be of use or of interest to students of that age. And so we're asking people to think a little bit outside themselves. What's happening instead, in a lot of cases, is the total absence of due process, the circulation of these lists of books and what it's leading to is essentially knee-jerk decisions to remove books at the drop of a hat. And so a lot of the books, when you look at what's happened in schools around the country, aren't going through any kind of process and they are just being blanket removed, usually through quick, somewhat arbitrary decisions by school administrators, maybe by teachers, sometimes even just by school boards, which put out these decrees, you know, that they are banning these lists of books. You know, in in Nampa, Idaho, the school board there got a list of books, about 23 books, I think were on it. And there was a process underway where the books were being read and discussed by committees. And some books were somewhere in this process. And basically the board members in one meeting got fed up and decided that they would abandon the process entirely. And starting that day they would move the books. The motion that they put forth was to remove those books from their school libraries forever. That word is in the motion that passed. And so right then and there, those board members decided they would remove those 23 books. And that list includes Margaret Atwood. It includes Toni Morrison, The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. Those books can now no longer be accessed in any of the schools or the libraries in that district because of this decision, of this motion. And so that is the extremism that we are encountering here, which is, this isn't in a lot of places about, you know, just nuancing at what age students might get books. There is a effort that is rampant, that is in particular seeking to remove books that touch on race and racism or have LGBTQ identities or themes. And those books, they just want to remove them from schools, whole cloth. So when we're talking about book banning, it's that kind of knee jerk, quick decree nature of decision making that is spreading and is
having a significant impact on, as I said, you know, more and more school districts, more and more states where more books are being removed. Now, there are a lot of people who are saying this is still not book banning. This is just book boundaries. We're just trying to talk about books in schools and you can still access them elsewhere. But if you really look at what's happening on the ground, increasingly the same people who are making these claims on schools are now making them against public libraries. There have been efforts to defund or close public libraries that refused to strip from their shelves LGBTQ books in some states. And so this is turning very quickly from about school libraries to be about public libraries. And it's very clear that nothing is necessarily safe, you know, and this could continue to shift to attack even digital access, because once we continue to get into the habit of empowering government officials to make these decisions to appease one group of people, parents, citizens, whoever they are, there's no telling where that goes. And that's why this is so alarming for for our concept of being and living in a democracy.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:22] Yeah, totally alarming. I mean, I did not realize that in Idaho they used actually the word "forever." I mean, that is really something different, right, than what we've seen before. I want to stick a little bit to schools for right now, because it's not just book bans, right? You're also talking about educational gag orders. And for example, the "don't say gay bill" in Florida or the rash of, quote, "patriotic educational dictates" assuring any teaching of, quote, "critical race theory." So can you talk about that before we jump on to the other stuff?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:09:59] It's hard to engage because so much of the conversation about this has become so politicized and is really quite enwrapped in a culture war. But I'll give you my best shot. There is an effort to misconstrue what happens in schools, to frame anything that people don't like about diversity and inclusion as quote unquote critical race theory. And it is eschewing any opportunity for actual debate and discussion about what the academic literature around critical race theory is, what conversations might be able to exist about how we talk about America's racialized past and present. It is a movement that increasingly sees censorship as the solution, and that is what is so problematic. So rather than trying to reinvigorate debate to get teachers talking about practice, to get parents and teachers and students and other experts engaging on any of these issues, that's not what's happening. What's happening is politicians are increasingly trying to label whatever it is that they don't like
in schools as something that should be censored. And so they are just getting very creative with that. So it started with an effort to... A few years ago penalize any school district that taught the 1619 project. There was this backlash to that project from The New York Times and there was this idea, let's write a law that says if a school district teaches this, they'll lose money. Now, that is a preposterous proposal, but from there comes so much more so quickly. It's no longer just The New York Times 1619 project. It's "we'll take away money from school districts if they teach any of a list of divisive concepts," borrowing some vague language that had been put out in an executive order by Donald Trump. And from there it became not just taking away money from districts but fining teachers. We're going to make it so that if a teacher teaches this stuff, they will lose their accreditation in our state. And so it's this incredible chilling effect. And once having seen and passed some of these laws, even just having proposed them and seeing that the political winds that they seem to generate for the people who introduce them, it's turned into a kind of mania. And I have every expectation that this is going to continue in the next legislative session. And so it's gone from issues about race and diversity and inclusion, issues about the 1619 project to now any kind of diversity in schools whatsoever. And then it's shifted as well to LGBTQ issues, to efforts to, as you mentioned, that "don't say gay" law in Florida, but there's all kinds of other low-level bans that have taken place, you know, bans on teachers having pronouns in their email signatures, bans on LGBTQ pride, flags in schools, bans in one school district in Florida on stickers that say it's an LGBTQ safe space. So this is getting more and more extreme. You could see how the kind of cloud of what is being banned is getting larger and larger. And in this moment, the other groups that are glomming onto this are ones who have longstanding interest in issues like removing sex education from school. And they've kind of slipped under the radar, slipped in here, you know, as part of, I think, conversations that are taking place among some political groups where they want to use this opportunity to roll back sex education, they want to roll back, again, LGBTQ representation in schools. And they are uncomfortable with difficult questions about racism in American history. And so all of that is now increasingly being pushed into this gray zone for teachers and librarians who increasingly, I know I've heard this from firsthand for many people, feel like if they're going to continue in their jobs, they just better not go near any one of those topics whatsoever. And that is so toxic for an educational environment that is supposed to inspire curiosity to answer students' questions. You know, you teach students that schools are meant to be open to their
ideas and explore the world. This is having serious impacts on how schools do any of that.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:02] Yeah, right. I mean, the freedom of your own thoughts, right, is being restricted here. But you just talked about librarians and teachers. You know, I'm thinking about the Oklahoma teacher who's being threatened, as you've also mentioned, with having her license taken away because she pointed her 10th grade class toward the Brooklyn Public Library banned books projects, so they could actually access those texts banned in their own school. And then Suzette Baker, who is a Texas librarian who was fired for refusing to take banned books off shelves. And I wonder what the effect of that is in terms of, how they can find a way actually to continue to expand the minds of their students or the public if you're in a public library. But also at the same time sidestep this rabid activism, let's call it, to ban books.
Jonathan Friedman: [00:15:06] I think that what this is doing for many teachers and librarians is it's making them scared. It's making them think twice about what books they put on shelves, what books they order, what choices they're making around curriculum. And there are many more cases we've seen where parents or someone else gets a hold of some kind of curricular material, questions it, and then suddenly the teacher is being disciplined for it. And, you know, even in that case in Oklahoma, what people need to realize is that that teacher is being disciplined for basically giving a QR code to the Brooklyn Public Library's Books Unbanned project. But also she's being disciplined under the state's educational gag order that doesn't have any provisions which actually ban a teacher from doing what she did. There's nothing in that law that says a teacher cannot give students access to books in a library. Their provisions in the law have to do with classroom discussions and making students feel certain feelings about issues related to race and sex. And so what they're doing is they're taking a law that doesn't actually give them the power to do these things, and they're just saying that it does now. And so that is the attitude and that is the moment that we're in with these laws, with these educational gag orders that have passed and with the book banning energy that has coalesced on the ground around schools, is that now we're seeing increasingly school administrators or others in state boards of education who want to act with total unbridled discretion to just almost like make laws to meet the situations they face, even if they haven't passed whatsoever. It's another way in which the chilling effect is getting worse. But also just the climate for educators is getting worse because now it's kind of a
wild West. You know, the law might be very narrowly tailored. So to say that there's, you know, really to be constitutional, to say that, you know, all we're doing is affirming people's First Amendment rights in schools and colleges and universities. But that doesn't matter. Increasingly, it doesn't matter what the law says, if everybody knows what the law means, and if everybody is increasingly interpreting the law when they can in the harshest and most extreme ways possible. So it doesn't matter if that's not in the law. And the reason why it doesn't matter is because in order to challenge and undo this, it takes a tremendous amount of energy. It's not as simple in a lot of cases as just saying, "well, that's not what's in the law, and so therefore, get my job back." You have to file lawsuits. Lawsuits take time. They take energy. They take resources. A lot of people don't have that in their day-to-day lives as something that they want to be engaged in. And they don't have the kind of emotional interest in becoming a public news story. And so I think in the face of this, what's happening all over the country, in the face of the fears and the intimidation tactics and the examples that are being made of people for doing essentially, you know, think about what this teacher has done here. In any school up to two years ago, nobody would think twice about a teacher encouraging students to access a library in her classroom. But this is the the way in which this climate is changing so quickly and in such stark ways. And so in the face of this, what are most people doing either A, They're leaving teaching and they're leaving librarianship or B, they're putting their head down and their nose to the ground and they are just avoiding anything controversial whatsoever.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:25] We're going to take a break to hear from our sponsors. When we come back, why the focus on public schools? Jonathan Friedman will help us understand the driving forces behind campaigns to ban books and silence teachers. But first, can we talk about notifications for a second? Who actually leaves those sounds on anymore? {cash register ringing} Well, besides that kind. That's another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business with Shopify. You'll create an online store in your vibe, discover new customers and grow the following that keeps them coming back. Shopify makes it simple to sell to anyone from anywhere, whether your thing is vintage tees or recipes for ghee, start selling with Shopify and join the platform. Simplifying commerce from millions of your favorite businesses worldwide. Shopify has all the sales channels sorted, so your business keeps growing from an in-person POS system to an all in one e-commerce platform, even across social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. And thanks
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Mila Atmos: [00:20:44] And now let's return to my conversation with Jonathan Friedman. Let's talk about like, why schools? Why libraries in schools? Why is that a soft spot? Why start there?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:20:59] Well, I think the pandemic made schools into a clear target. I think there was a lot of energy around school closures and around teachers and virtual learning. And, you know, the verdict is out that none of that worked so well. And a whole generation of students right now is facing a real educational crisis. But then also add to that that schools are a routine punching bag, that education has always been political. There's a culture war that is almost always going on around what is taught in schools and how they're run and how much money they're apportioned, etc. And so, you know, it almost just makes sense as a kind of recurring arena to which political and cultural disagreements return. But then there is something also about this idea that has set in that schools are somehow the enemies of their communities, that they are dangerous institutions, that what's happening there is out of anyone's control and that you as a citizen need to get, you know, active and alarmed about it. I think it's also really important to see that a lot of the people behind these groups aren't themselves necessarily terribly invested in public schools in numerous states. There have been accounts of the people filing book complaints and challenges that they do not have children enrolled in the schools where they are challenging books. They might not have children enrolled in public schools at all, whether they are parents or not. Some of them seem to have been engaged in home schooling. And so the energy behind this and why
is it targeting public schools is something even more complicated than it first seems. On one hand, yes, it's clear that there's a political movement here, but on the other, there seem to be groups and kind of energies being targeted at schools that aren't at all being generated within school environments. It's a kind of anger and movement against schools by those who aren't necessarily always engaged in them. And that isn't always the case. I think they have grown to a place now that more people are engaging with them, but it's actually quite hard to tell how genuine, truly genuine a lot of this is.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:07] Right. Well, let's talk about those people. Let's talk about the people who are actively lobbying for banning books. I read an article where I think the active group is called Moms for Liberty. So who are they? Who are the people who, you know, go to the school board meetings and say, we don't want these books? In addition, of course, to the politicians who are now talking about it everywhere. But who are they exactly? Because you said they're not necessarily people who have kids in school.
Jonathan Friedman: [00:23:37] I mean, some some of them are not necessarily people who have kids in schools. I think in a lot of cases they might be parents who aren't on board with, you know, latest cultural changes surrounding gender or sexuality or discussions about racism. I think sometimes there's a yearning among them for a kind of return to what schools once were as places that are perhaps less diverse or that don't ask so many difficult questions about the country's past. But I think a lot of cases, ironically, you know, when you look at Moms for Liberty, they seem to be championing a concept of liberty that is for them, but nobody else. And so it actually if you were to think about, like, what a school for liberty is or a school with freedom, it's not a school where a small group of parents is coming to board meetings and exerting political pressure to remove books with LGBTQ characters, to stop teachers from asking, you know, provocative questions in classrooms. That's not a school that embraces liberty. And so, on the other hand, you know, it's very clear that if you look at Moms for Liberty, I believe they formed only in 2021, and they've very rapidly spread to having almost 200 chapters around the country. And so it's not only them and these chapters, but I think there is a playbook that they have begun to share online about how to build a community for themselves, how to build a chapter, how to have an impact, what it is to point to in these books that gets people upset about it. And all of this is very much in disservice to young people who themselves, not only when we think about maybe, maybe their own children, who ought to have a right to be exposed to the world, but also just all the other
students and parents in these districts who are being impacted by these policies. And so it's hard to speak in blanket judgments about all of these people. And I don't think that necessarily they're all, I don't know, bad people, but I do think that they have a warped notion of how schools are meant to function in our country and that they ought to and have an obligation to serve a diverse public. And that carries a lot of complications with it. You know, schools are turbulent places because of it, but that's not about schools serving any one corner. That's about schools being open to all.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:00] Mm hmm. Doesn't our information ecosystem make a mockery of these bands? You know, kids are definitely better than the rest of us at accessing exactly whatever information they want, like a Gen Z firewall has to be pretty tight. So I also wonder about the way in which this de-legitimizes such a vital institution of our democracy, and that's public education. I'm asking really, what's the effect of the intimidation, but also the absurdity, the futility of trying to shove cultural genies back in the bottle.
Jonathan Friedman: [00:26:37] I mean, it feels deeply symbolic, doesn't it? And so archaic. But that is the power of the public school in our imagination, the symbolic power of what it means to have these institutions that are open to ideas and open to all students to access. And I think on a deeper level, what we have to recognize is that there is still something truly unique about going to a library and thumbing through, you know, stacks of books, seeing what catches your eye, being physically present with the book. Books have that unique power, that tangible power. And so why is this energy being focused there? You know, you could say, and people have, that this is really just a political movement. It's an effort to score political points. It's, you know, particularly targeting states as a wedge issue ahead of the next election. But I think there is something kind of deeper in the zeitgeist here around what it means to think about what people have access to. And it's also just the gateway. And so it's starting right now with schools and libraries. But once you get a moral panic going about what it is that people have access to, there's no telling where the energy behind that goes. And we've seen glimpses of this, as well. So for example, this year, a few senators sent a letter to the FCC asking for new rating systems on TV shows with LGBTQ characters so that, for example, you could turn on the TV and have something that tells you that a show has somebody who's gay in it at some point and therefore could turn away from it whatsoever. And so it's starting around schools, but I'm interested in the deeper ideas
setting in the mood, the climate, because as I said, it's somewhat fluid, it's very creative, and it increasingly is trying to foment a lot of outrage, essentially just about culture generally among those who would rather control where it goes next to limit what people have access to and essentially push a whole host of identities then and voices that have been historically marginalized back into the closet. And that is what part of this is. That's what's driving it a lot. And so while it does feel like, yes, many young people right now, of course, they could still get that book somewhere else, especially for Gen Z students. We also have to recognize that for a lot of people at the school library is where they find books. They have to know about a book's existence in order to find it. And they may not know. Many young people may not know what it is that will interest them in literature. And so the whole point of school is and school libraries... Why libraries were put inside schools in the first place, right. Is to encourage that literacy and that development, that civic engagement, that exploration that is very healthy for a society. And so at a very core level, pushing all of that into people's personal lives, you know, pushing it all into the private marketplace and onto young people to do on the Internet that is actually chipping away at what we might think of as a robust public sphere for civic engagement for all citizens.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:44] So a few minutes ago, you talked about that magic, the physical, tactile, and -- I'm going there -- almost spiritual experience thumbing through volumes in a library, like I'm a totally a book nerd, and I used to work in a library. And so I actually want to talk about why books are so important to explore with you, what books and reading can do in terms of giving us the opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes. Stories, especially written stories on a page, require imagination and empathy from readers. They demand our partnership in building their narrative worlds. Totally, in fiction, right? I totally immerse myself, you know, jump into another world, but but also somewhat in nonfiction. And I'm curious, do you remember a book that really blew your mind, shifted your perspective, took you out of your experience that you read as a child or a young person?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:30:38] Well, I do think that books have an incredible power. And there's something about the magic of of reading that really can take us to different places. And, you know, we can build a whole world in our minds. You know, when I read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which is about a Black family growing up in 1930s, Mississippi, and the incredible racism that they face in the aftermath of Jim Crow laws.
And for someone who grows up, you know, in the 1980s and you're not really growing up in that universe whatsoever, it's really difficult to imagine even a half century earlier a place like that and what it was like for those people to put yourselves in those shoes. A book like that can can transport you. And it sort of makes you understand and see an experience and a historical period that clearly continues to shape things, shape things in Mississippi, and shape dynamics around race relations in the United States today. And so, you know, there is something incredible about that, and it is so unique. And for me personally, I've never been able to have that same connection with a Kindle. I like to dog here my pages. I like to, you know, encounter my book on my, on my table. It's sort of like there's something very special to that. You know, the moments when we pick up reading, when we get lost in the book, when we read more than we intended, then when we decide, you know what, we're just going to finish this book right now because we just have to know a real... right, the concept of a page turner. Right. And so I think there is something so incredible and it's quite sad to think about that. Right. And that opportunity being taken away from young people that they might not be encouraged to pursue books that interest them, not being encouraged to immerse themselves in books in that way. And that's been such a fundamental part of education, of schools.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:30] Yeah, it definitely is. This, this discovery and exhilaration. Right. The page turning. I want to know how it ends. That's all lost when these things are pulled off the shelves. Not to mention, of course, the idea that you're expanding your perspectives and learning about another world that you wouldn't otherwise encounter if you weren't reading that book. Well, so your focus is on schools, colleges, educational contexts in general, and First Amendment rights, especially, in schools. It's not totally cut and dried, though, right? Can you talk about the amount of latitude school boards and administrators have to ban books?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:33:10] I would say that the touchstone case here for this is one that was decided by the Supreme Court in 1982 called Pico v Island Trees. And one of the challenges of that decision is that it wasn't a majority decision, it was a plurality decision. So the court itself was split. But nonetheless, you know, some of the animating ideas about how to think about these issues come from that case and the judgment written by Justice William J. Brennan, in which he pointed out that when we think about something like a school library, it's somewhat different from curriculum in that the school library is a place of what he called voluntary inquiry. And on a very micro
level, if we know that the First Amendment in the Constitution is supposed to limit the ability of the government to suppress ideas, then in the facts of the case, in that Pico case, where like many school boards right now, it involved a school board making a unilateral decision to remove a set of books from schools and very much clearly driven by a desire to limit what students could access. It struck Brennan that that was a clear violation of constitutional principles. And as he wrote in that case, he said our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas. And so that's how we have to think about what is going on with school libraries and why it is that a school library needs to be very careful about how it is stocking books and how it is in particular removing access to books because it is a form of official formal government suppression. And when that is done because of malice or because of an effort to suppress particular ideas as is being done around the country that is meant to be unconstitutional. On another point in the same decision, you know, Brennan also talks about how school boards do have leeway to set curriculum, but that schools as institutions must operate in accordance with the transcendent imperatives of the First Amendment. And so, yes, there are issues that remain unsettled here about what exactly does that mean regarding curriculum, regarding suppression. If a school board is engaged in a process of determining they don't want to teach a certain book anymore, the way it has been is that official suppression? Is it not? I think the issues are more gray when we're talking about curriculum, but they're more clear cut when we're talking about libraries. And it's that fundamental concept of a library as a place where you can go and exercise your freedom to read, freedom to think. And obviously how the two of those are intertwined with our freedom of speech. So we know in this country that those are vital constitutional principles and they ought to be upheld in our democracy. It's essentially, think of it this way: You can't have a democracy whose schools operate in ways that are totally anathema and an opposition to our constitutional principles. And it's not just around school libraries that that has been decided by the Supreme Court. You can see a similar line of thinking around the question of whether students have to say the Pledge of Allegiance and stand for it in schools. In the 1940s, there's a case there where, again, the Supreme Court is saying they kind of mock the idea that American schools would have to mandate patriotism in the way that authoritarian states do. And they say that's not the American way. We're a democracy, we have liberty. We have basically power of the individual to exercise that freedom. And so it's not just around books that we have seen this issue in questions about public schools as institutions in our country. But it's how we have to think about them as essentially incubators for
young people, and that therefore, it's especially imperative, especially so that our public schools stand up for and reflect these core principles.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:01] Um hum, yes. So have a quick question about the First Amendment and you spoke so eloquently about it just now, but there's this feeling that I have that when people talk about the First Amendment in schools, is that the First Amendment that's applicable to you and me -- we're adults -- it's not the same as it is for children, or people under 18, or people under 12. So how do we think about that in this context?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:37:26] So this was an issue in the 1970s in a case called Tinker v Des Moines, where students wore armbands to protest the Vietnam War to school and they were suspended. And it was precisely the question before the court. And they ultimately decided that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gates. And so although there might still be lingering questions exactly about what the constitutional basis is for students' rights or young people's rights versus parents' rights, a lot of that does remain gray from the Supreme Court. But it's clear that at least in schools, as institutions where the government is essentially the official arbiter of what goes on there, that, you know school administrators are government officials in public schools, that in that context, the idea that students can be subject to a kind of regime in which they have no rights whatsoever, basically that is inconsistent with how we think about the First Amendment. And so, yes, there are questions here about does that mean that a young person has the right to do whatever they want all the time, access whatever media versus what their parents say? You know, some of that hasn't been tested at that level yet. But they are questions that are interesting to turn over when we think about what is it truly, again, mean to live in a society with freedom and liberty as its animating principles? And although today we all feel like nobody under 18 has any business making any judgments whatsoever, that itself is also a relatively recent construction. It used to be the case that many young people didn't finish high school, that they were working jobs, that they were seen as adults somewhat younger. And I think this is the case around book banning that, where some of the questions around book banning become, I don't know, most upsetting is that in a lot of cases we're talking about efforts to suppress books about sex or LGBTQ issues or racism, whatever it is, for 17 and 18 year olds, many of whom are, you know, either engaging in those activities or questioning their own identities, the very people for whom we ought to have
books available to engage with and help them through that process. And so that is what's so disappointing about this moment. It's that there's no question to me the idea that you get your First Amendment rights when you turn 19, to me that doesn't really make much sense.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:51] So where are the battlegrounds in this fight? Where are you at PEN, focusing your efforts?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:39:58] So right now what we are doing is trying to really document and raise public awareness around the country of what's happening. And we've been doing that for the past year with reports that we've been putting out, blogs and in other media engagement, trying to make sure that press is covering this phenomenon. And I think one of the real difficulties is that this is a deeply local issue. We're talking about school districts. You know how many of those there are around the country? There are a lot. And it comes on the heels of many years of decline of local journalism. And so there aren't necessarily channels in local communities where people can follow what's happening at school boards. The school board itself as a place of civic engagement has faded from collective memory and collective understanding. And so we're trying to invigorate that. We're trying to get people active again, because I do believe that one of the reasons why this has gotten to where it is is because so much pressure has been exerted on school boards in the absence of any countervailing voices. So even though in a lot of places, the people who want these restrictions have begun as minorities, if nobody is saying anything else, and if nobody on the school board is able to stand up to them, then they get their way. And that's what's been happening. And so for me, one of the projects that I'll be turning to in the next year is really trying to help people not just learn about this as a kind of general phenomenon. Oh, they are banning books at extreme levels around the country, but to provide people more tools to engage, to write letters to school boards, to talk to their elected representatives, to engage with their local libraries, again, because we are in danger of losing that as a public institution, not just the school library, but the public library. As more people increasingly see these public institutions as somehow politicized or as dangerous institutions in society, which of course the opposite is true. And so for me, the battlegrounds really are around school boards, school board races, school board policies, and getting engaged just in that very local democratic process.
Mila Atmos: [00:42:11] Excellent. So what are two things an everyday person can do to get engaged? What are the top two items?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:42:19] Yeah, well, I would say number one is be informed. You know, start following these issues and figure out what's going on locally. Someone said to me that when they went to a school board meeting recently, they realized that these people had been already going there for a long time. They didn't even know. So it was happening in that backyard and that would be the second one. Go to a school board meeting, get involved. Even if you do not have children in your district, if you are a supporter of reading, a fan of books, a believer in democracy, find out what's going on locally. Because in more places than not, this is what's going on. This kind of pressure tactic, these scenes of people demanding that books be removed and not enough significant opposition. And if you're a school board member, if you've been elected and you're concerned about being re-elected, if you only are hearing from the people who want you to remove books and from no other constituents. That's who you're going to cave into. And so it's very important that even though it might feel like isn't this obvious and isn't some of this a bit archaic, people really ought to spend a little bit more energy at the very local level where they can.
Mila Atmos: [00:43:26] That's excellent advice. So we always like to end our conversations on a hopeful note. So looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Jonathan Friedman: [00:43:38] I think that despite the obvious, disappointing aspects of this movement, the distressing aspects of it, the ways in which they are having success. I think that what it is doing is forcing people to come to grips with and to return to an understanding of core principles according to which we can operate as a society. That might not be happening everywhere. But I think for a lot of people it's putting into sharp relief questions about free speech, democracy and liberty and maybe making them think twice about their own feelings toward them. I think for a long time we have seen a kind of ambivalence towards the First Amendment and free speech, particularly from those who have been historically marginalized. Whereas a century ago it was only voices on the left that were talking about free speech. And there's been this sort of effort to claim it over on the political right. I think that this moment has the potential to remind people why free expression is so important as an artistic endeavour, as a scholarly endeavor, as a, you know, in just, in the service of writing and creativity. And perhaps
that out of this, that could in the hopeful vision of it, that is is where this goes from from here. It goes to a kind of a new embrace of that as something that is a critical pillar of American society, but also of the arts and education.
Mila Atmos: [00:45:06] Yeah. Hear. Hear. I hope you're right that this will galvanize people around the core principles and the idea that as a democracy, we must have free expression and the freedom of thought and the liberty to share ideas with each other.
Jonathan Friedman: [00:45:23] It's, it's been great to share my own ideas here. Right. A great example of that and what comes out of interesting conversations.
Mila Atmos: [00:45:29] That's it. Well, thank you, Jonathan, for being on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Jonathan Friedman: [00:45:35] My pleasure.
Mila Atmos: [00:45:37] Jonathan Friedman is the director of Free expression and Education programs at PEN America. Next week on Future Hindsight, we are going to lift up youth activism with two amazing citizen changemakers from Gen Z for Change. Aiden Kohn-Murphy is the founder and executive director of the organization, and Jack Petocz is a political strategist there, who also mounted a campaign to recall his local school board in Florida to fight back against anti-LGBTQ board members. And he won. Now, Aiden and Jack are working to activate the youth vote for the midterm elections. It's a really hopeful and inspiring conversation, so make sure you join us next time on Future Hindsight. And before I go, first of all, thanks for listening. You must really like the show if you're still here. I have something of a favor to ask. Could you rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you. This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sara Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:47:09] This podcast is part of the democracy group.