REMARKS
Jonathan Friedman on Free Expression and Education at PEN America
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3 min
Jonathan Friedman, Director of Free Expression and Education Programs at PEN America, speaks about the challenges to free expression and educational content across the United States. He highlights the ongoing efforts to censor educational speech and the banning of books under vaguely worded state laws. Friedman documents an alarming number of book bans across multiple states and school districts, emphasizing the impact on diverse and marginalized communities. Additionally, he praises New York City's libraries for their innovative response to these challenges, standing as a model for public libraries everywhere in the fight against censorship and for the support of an equitable and inclusive democracy.
Jonathan Friedman
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Thank you.
1:02:18
So, Chair Rivera, good afternoon, and distinguished council members.
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Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
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My name is Jonathan Friedman, and I serve as director of free expression and education programs at Penn America.
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We are a nonprofit, non partisan organization that stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide.
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We view free expression as an underpinning of democracy and a cause above politics.
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For 3 years, we have been at the forefront of documenting an alarming attack on the freedom to read, learn, and think.
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We are living through a tidal wave of state laws to advance educational speech censorship, whose spirit mirrors but also dwarfs the worst impulses of McCarthyism.
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This is a campaign to exert ideological control over schools, libraries, colleges, universities, even museums, institutions that anchor a free society and an informed citizenry.
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Among the more pernicious aspects of this movement has been its concerted focus on banning books.
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Our research at Penn America has documented nearly 6 1000 book bans across 41 States 247 school districts in the past 2 school years.
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Today, books are being pulled from shelves in some districts by the hundreds, even thousands.
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Mass lists circulate online of books to target.
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Vaguely worded state laws are turning education totally on its head.
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Turning teachers and librarians into agents of censorship.
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Again and again, we see efforts to ban books with protagonists of color Books about African American history, books about LGBTQ identities, efforts to take away the very books that many students, families, and educators say they want.
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To access books that many say save lives.
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Not every book is for every kid, not every book is for every family.
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But the unifying principle is that a variety of choice means kids and families can determine what's relevant to them.
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Now, we are frequently told if books are banned in schools, people can quote, just get them at the public library.
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We expect public libraries to step into any such breach, reliable, ever present institutions of democratic civil society.
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But we cannot treat libraries as a fail safe mechanism for public education on the one hand and undercut their operations with the other.
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In the national fight against bands, New York City's libraries have risen to the occasion, launching innovative programs to grant ready access to books for youth across the country, and working to raise public awareness of this crisis.
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They have set the bar high, serving as a model for how public libraries can stand unflinchingly to facilitate an equitable and inclusive democracy for all.
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In this, Our libraries mirror the values of our city.
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New Yorkers know that we stand for something universal and that what we decide matters.
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My hope is that New York will continue to be a citadel of books and learning at a time when they are so profoundly under siege elsewhere.
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Thank you.