{"id":30795,"date":"2025-07-01T20:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T20:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/30795\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T20:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T20:48:09","slug":"keep-them-on-the-shelf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/30795\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep Them On The Shelf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several years ago, Ira Wells<\/a>, an associate professor of literature at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, was alarmed to hear the principal of his children\u2019s elementary school say that she wished the school\u2019s library \u201ccould get rid of all the old books.\u201d Although he understood that she spoke from a sincere and well-intentioned desire to empty the shelves of homophobic, racist, sexist, and Eurocentric content\u2014all of which can have a negative impact on children\u2019s developing sense of identity and emotional well-being\u2014he found the statement offensive to democratic values. At the same time, he was equally appalled by the efforts of Moms for Liberty<\/a>, No Left Turn in Education<\/a>, and other rightwing groups throughout the United States and Canada to restrict materials they believe \u201cindoctrinate\u201d children to hate Western values.<\/p>\n

As Wells makes clear in his new book<\/a> On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy, he finds both perspectives deeply flawed. The book grounds its brief, impassioned argument against book banning in the long history of worldwide censorship efforts. The end result is a cogent, hard-hitting defense of free speech and free expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere literature opens conversations, censorship closes them,\u201d Wells writes. \u201cWhere literature provokes questions, censorship insists upon answers.\u201d Book banning, then, \u201crepresents an attack on your intellectual autonomy, your right to determine the future of your own mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, while Wells notes that book censorship is currently on the rise\u2014the American Library Association<\/a> reports that 2,452 individual titles were challenged in 2024<\/a>, up from an average of 273 annual challenges before 2020\u2014he argues that the ongoing fight for intellectual freedom has given ban opponents the opportunity to raise their voices and organize their communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wells spoke to The Progressive about the book and the defense of free expression one week after the book\u2019s U.S. release. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Q: You wrote that in 2023, Ontario\u2019s Peel District School Board, decided to remove thousands of books published before 2008, believing that they included outdated ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and culture. This included taking works by Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Anne Frank, Ibram X. Kendi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Angie Thomas, and Malala Yousafzai from school libraries. The district called this \u201c<\/strong>equity-based weeding<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d but it obviously \u201cweeded\u201d books that promote equity and inclusivity. What\u2019s happened since the district made this determination?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ira Wells<\/strong>: Although this was not my children\u2019s school district, I followed what was happening closely. Ultimately, the education minister in Toronto, Stephen Lecce, ordered the district to stop <\/a>the weeding process in the fall of 2023. The district then said the books could stay on the shelves as long as they were accurate, relevant to student populations, inclusive, not harmful, and supported the curriculum. They never admitted any wrongdoing and, as far as I know, the district administration\u2019s philosophy regarding the value of \u201cold\u201d books has not changed. Thankfully, this ideological trend has not spread to other districts in the province.<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong>: The term \u201cweeding\u201d seems like a way to sidestep being seen as a censor or book banner. Does that seem accurate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells:<\/strong> Every public and school library has to make choices based on shelf space, money, relevance of a particular topic, and what patrons request, so, of course, weeding of some sort happens in every library. But weeding should not be used to get rid of books that do not match a favored worldview or ideology. Weeding should never be a fig leaf for censorship. I defer to the American Library Association on this. They argue that reading is essential and make clear<\/a> that the selection process should not be used to remove controversial materials.<\/p>\n

My view of public library acquisition is that, to maintain their credibility, they need to base their purchasing decisions on public interest. People may value a book that I think promotes disinformation. But reading this book allows me to inform myself about what its supporters are thinking. This makes it valuable.<\/p>\n

School libraries, on the other hand, have to be more attentive to ensuring that books are age-appropriate. This is not to say that they should be propaganda organs for one side of an argument.<\/p>\n

Q: You write that the targets of prosecution for writing and making visual art that violates obscenity laws have changed, from zeroing in on Jews in the 1930s to zeroing in on the LGBTQ+ community today. Can you say more about this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells<\/strong>: The violation of obscenity statutes is always open to cultural interpretation and is steeped in what the powerful want to impose on others. In the 1930s, there was a lot of overt antisemitism woven into the culture, and obscenity laws were used<\/a> as a bludgeon to go after Jews who created art that some considered degenerate. Today, that designation is directed at<\/a> LGBTQ+ works and those that deal with race or racism. The point here is that the legal definition of obscenity has evolved and is essentially what any group in power says it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q: The right wing argues that it is \u201csaving\u201d the children from harmful ideologies and sexual perversion. You see this as disingenuous, so what do you see as their actual goal?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells:<\/strong> \u201cSaving the children\u201d is a tip of the rhetorical hat to signal that they want to do more than control book content. Just look at Project 2025<\/a> and you\u2019ll see that the agenda of the right is to impose control over the population. It is crucial to understand that censorship and book bans are one strand of a larger political movement. Back in 2022, Steve Bannon said<\/a> that the key to Trumpist success in regaining power was in mobilizing parent anger and going after the low-hanging fruit on school boards. The lesson to be learned from this is that positions on library and school boards are open to everyone, and people who oppose censorship and book bans can also run for municipal council or a governing board.<\/p>\n

In the last few years, we\u2019ve seen groups like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education realize that even if they can\u2019t control the ideas that circulate online, they can go to their local or school library and try to exert control there. They see books as levers to identify who belongs and who does not. What I wish we could impress on people who say they want to protect children from harm is that they\u2019re creating new harms by whitewashing history and teaching kids that censorship is the right way to respond to anything they find troubling. Equally unsettling, they treat children as passive receptacles who become traumatized by the content of the books they read.<\/p>\n

Instead, reading should be encouraged. Kids pick up that reading is often seen as the equivalent of \u201ceat your vegetables.\u201d We should stress that reading is pleasurable. Moreover, reading a great book is never reducible to one message. Books push us to have conversations, which is why book clubs are often popular and public readings are well attended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q: Do you see efforts like \u2018I Read Banned Books\u2019 <\/strong>campaigns<\/strong><\/a> as effective ways to encourage reading?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells:<\/strong> I see them as double-edged. In the United States and Canada, if you want to make a book a bestseller, having a big event that is threatened by protesters is a great way to do it. Before the stabbing<\/a> of Salman Rushdie<\/a>, The Satanic Verses was no longer being talked about, but after he was attacked, it became number one. This development depends on there being an intellectual infrastructure that supports free speech and free expression. In countries without these protections, this reality does not apply.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Some people have suggested a middle ground where racist\/sexist\/homophobic\/Eurocentric books remain available but include an explanation to situate the book in a time and place\u2014not to excuse bigotry, but to place it in context. Do you see this as a good strategy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells:<\/strong> Creating a framing mechanism can be a way for educators to present books that are in the library. I think the decision about what should be available should rest with librarians and not Moms for Liberty. I agree with John Milton, who said that bad ideas do not need books to spread.<\/p>\n

Q: You write that the Catholic Church created an Index of Prohibited Books in 1557 that sought to control the spiritual and ideological thinking of church members. The index was abolished in 1966. What prompted them to end it?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wells: <\/strong>There were always negotiations and differing points of view within the church regarding specific prohibitions. By 1966, it had become impossible to keep up with the pace of culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> We know that words have power and can cause harm. Abortion providers were <\/strong>murdered<\/strong><\/a> after anti-abortion leaders urged their followers to take action. How can we rein in hate speech while simultaneously protecting free expression?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells<\/strong>: People who believe that assaultive speech is actual harm want that speech to be regulated. This raises an important question: Who decides what constitutes assaultive speech? The concept of wounding words is inherently subjective. People usually think of this in racial terms, but someone who is disabled, trans, or obese might feel wounded by a comment they hear or something they read. But once you open up the category of wounding words, you give veto power to people who feel hurt. Libraries should not allow one\u2019s personal opinion, one\u2019s personal sensitivity, to be used to remove books. In addition, the concept of harm is very broad and can range from post-traumatic stress disorder to mild discomfort.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong>: Self-censorship is always a risk in periods when people are fired for writing a book, teaching a book, or putting a book on a library shelf. How much of this are you seeing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wells<\/strong>: We see a lot of self-censorship. Publishers soft-censor<\/a> their lists because large orders have been canceled by companies afraid of pushback over books promoting queer lives, honest appraisals of history, or opposing racism.<\/p>\n

That said, schools should be places of education, not indoctrination. Education is about building up critical thinking faculties in students. Indoctrination is about tearing down critical faculties and promoting submission to one set of ideas. As I see it, the right and the left are coming at book bans and censorship from very different places. I am not interested in a moral equivalence. Rightwing parents\u2019 rights groups would decide what your kids can read because they think they see child porn in schools. Progressive educators believe that classic books are Eurocentric and heteronormative sources of harm. This is what I call the New Censorship Consensus. Both sides treat books as a source of contagion and want them to demonstrate their moral value or be removed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I wrote in On Book Banning, we can\u2019t censor our way out of history and its entanglements, but we can and must reckon with our national failures. I believe we can do this without sacrificing expressive freedom as an ideal. The solutions involve a re-articulation and reaffirmation of these ideals, not purging libraries of every book that may cause harm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several years ago, Ira Wells, an associate professor of literature at Victoria College at the University of Toronto,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[26201,20717,1022,411,26200,26202,171,1815,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-30795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-activism-dissent","9":"tag-book-bans","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-censorship","12":"tag-dispatches","13":"tag-eleanor-j-bader","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-interview","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}