(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

One of the things that we're gonna talk about today is a report by PEN America that between July 1st, 2021 and June 30th, 2022, there have been more than 2,500 incidents of books being banned in school libraries and school classrooms.

There is a growing movement to ban books across the country, and PEN has issued a report to that effect.

We're joined by the Managing Director from PEN America, Washington, D.C., Nadine Farid Johnson to talk about this.

And yes, first of all, Nadine, if you could tell us, kind of describe what PEN is and what its objectives are.

- Sure.

Steve, thank you so much for having me on today.

It's really a pleasure.

PEN America is a nonprofit that stand at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the US and around the world.

It actually started in the wake of World War I as poets, P, essayists, E, and novelist, N. Although, we no longer use that acronym as an international literary club with the intent to form community among those different groups.

And now, it has blossomed.

We are in our centenary this year into a global organization that does focus on the effort to protect free expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

- Yeah, and it's made up of, as you said, of people from all areas of the creative arts because obviously they are kind of, in the cross hairs of some of these things that we're gonna talk about a little bit later.

So, it is, as you said, made up of novelists, and writers, and illustrators, people like that.

When you look at this, the need exists now.

I suppose, probably as much as it ever has, and maybe even more so than when the organization was originally founded.

- That's exactly right.

We have been able to grow.

I'm in part because there is no shortage of work in this arena.

Not only in the US but also around the world.

From everything.

From political prisoners, people who are in prison for their free expression, journalists who tell a story that someone might not want to have revealed to, as we'll talk about today, what's happening in terms of First Amendment rights in the United States.

- And in terms of, if people would like to get involved in this, or find out more about the organization, obviously, simply going online.

It's out there in social media.

It's out there on the web, that sort of thing.

So, if people are interested in participating, supporting.

It's very easy to do.

- Yes, absolutely.

We are actually a membership organization and we are fueled by our members.

We have 8,500 members right now, all around the country and several different chapter cities.

And so, if you go to pen.org, P-E-N.O-R-G, you can find out information there.

We would be more than happy to welcome you.

- Okay.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, one of the things that I thought, and we'll get into this as we go through, because obviously, there's a lot of material here.

If you look at the report, it's pretty astounding.

But, one of the things I thought was interesting was that, there were actually, there's a segment in there that talks about librarians, tips for them to document instances they're dealing with, and harassment, and that sort of thing, which raises it to a different level.

You'd like to think that librarians would be relatively safe from that sort of thing, but the reality is, they're catching a lot of flack in this situation because of books they may or may not even have on their shelves.

Because I know, in some instances, people have said, "Well, we don't like that book."

"Well, we don't even have that book on our shelves," and yet people are assuming it's there.

The report that puts out is called, "Banned in the USA.

The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools."

The report's pretty extensive.

And one of the first things is, you know, what is a book banning?

How would we decide... How would we describe that?

So, people said, "Well, what do you mean by you've banned a book?"

What does that actually mean?

- So, a book ban, PEN America defines a book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and in response to a challenge by a parent or other community member, by an administrator, or by a lawmaker or other government official.

And where that action taken against the book results and the book's removal from school classrooms or school library shelves from the... Or otherwise restricted or diminished access to students as a result of that.

Where the book was previously available and is no longer available, or has that access restricted.

- Yeah, and as we said, there've been, just in the last, in the one documented year, more than 2,500 instances of that.

[Nadine] - Right.

- And I think, the other thing that's interesting about this too is it obviously focuses on a certain number of topics and in the report, there's a whole list of different findings they take place.

But specifically, it seems there are four or five categories that are at the top of the list.

Race is one of them.

Gender is one of them.

Is there a difference now why those are topics versus maybe what's your organization dealt with maybe 10 or 15 or 20 years ago?

Has the topic target changed at all, or has it always been those kind of topics?

Because I can remember when I was in school, or high school, a long time ago...

I mean, "Catcher in the Rye" was the big dangerous book to have that almost seems quaint now in comparison to some of the things that are being targeted now.

- It was really interesting, Steve.

It's that, we have not been doing this extensive tracking of book bans because frankly, there has not been such a need over the course of the past decade or so.

And I think, we have records going back to maybe 2015, 2013.

There were maybe a couple of hundred challenges to books in schools, and now we're talking as, you know, over 2,500.

So, this really is a moment in time that is different from what we've seen previously.

And even if you're going back to the McCarthy era, a lot of what was focused on McCarthy era was looking at school textbooks.

This again, is different.

We're talking about literature and nonfiction that's available in school classrooms and school libraries.

But you're correct on the topics that seem to be the focus of most of these books.

You have issues talking about race or where the protagonists of color are, or are secondary characters of color, protagonists of LGBTQ identity or talking about sexual content.

Those are the things that really seem to be focused on the most in this current effort.

- Yeah, and the effort seems to be more organized, obviously, as you said in the past, a couple of hundred incidents.

Now, there seems to be an organized effort to go to every school district, it seems, and approach them with this.

And we know, locally, we've had one, and that's probably a little different too.

It probably used to be more localized.

Someone didn't like a book, but now there's an organized effort probably because it's so much easier to spread that information globally through the internet or whatever.

But the organized effort is, what I think is, has ramped this up obviously too.

- Yes, it absolutely has.

In our report, we uncovered approximately 50 national groups that between and among them have affiliations with approximately 300 groups at the local level.

And these groups are working together, or at least in some loose fashion to bring these challenges.

What's really important here is that many of these are, in fact, localized.

As I mentioned, there are local affiliations.

Sometimes, people in the communities are not affiliated with the schools.

They don't have a child in school, for example.

And other times, what's happening with these bans is that there is an action taken in response to one of these challenges and it's done without any real process.

So, the end result of that is that you have a few people in a particular community that by their actions are eliminating access to literature or to nonfiction for all students.

And that's where the ban comes in.

It's also important to remember that these works have been selected by educators, by librarians for use as part of the educational offering.

So, when a ban happens that overrides that choice, without any real process, that's how we define a ban.

- Well, when we come back, let's talk about that, because obviously, if you are an educator, you're an administrator and someone from the community comes to you, it puts you in a really difficult spot.

So, we can talk about how schools are reacting to that.

Back in just a moment with Nadine Farid Johnson from PEN America, here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us on The Journal.

Our guest is Nadine Farid Johnson from PEN America, an organization that has just released a report that tracks the incidence of book banning across the country.

When we were talking last segment, we talked about the fact that generally, when books are selected for school libraries, they're done by librarians who are educated in that field.

Administrators, other educators, they're guided by other groups as well, the publishers and national organizations too.

But, as you were saying, if someone approaches a school district, it could be someone not even with a child in the school.

Not that that should matter, but it does seem a little interesting that that would be the case.

How do school districts who don't have processes in place or have never been confronted with, how do they react to this?

Because obviously, they, first of all, probably don't know what to say.

Do they just pull the book off the shelf?

Do they say, "Well, let's... We'll think about that."

What kind of happens in those processes where districts have never been approached like this with an effort to ban a book or a series of books?

- What we are seeing here in our research is that many of these 2,500 bans, and I think actually 96% of them were done without any sort of adherence to process.

And so, you're talking about an overwhelming majority of ban where someone came in, someone or someones has came in and said, "We don't like these books."

We're concerned about these books, and let's take them off the shelf."

Sometimes, what happens is that these books will be, what PEN America calls banned pending investigation, where instead of leaving the books on the shelves, while a decision is made about the content of the material and it's suitability for the particular school, they are removed immediately.

And that considers a ban, because again, a ban is about access to the book for students where access had existed and then no longer exists.

That's a ban.

The issue is that when there is no such process, when it is done in an ad, what's called an ad hoc manner, the students are suffering and they don't have access to the material.

And there isn't any sort of rubric to which anyone can turn to say, "How was this considered and what was happening?"

And then what is the effect on the librarians and the teachers who did, in fact, look to use this material in their classrooms, in the school library as part of educational offering.

- Yeah, well, you're right.

If there aren't any criteria, there's no list of, "Okay, if it's this, then we react this way, et cetera, et cetera."

Then, it's a very random targeting that goes on, because you could have books that might be every bit as upsetting to someone else who, since the title wasn't raised stays on the shelf, but it's interesting.

And I guess... And of course the topics like we talked about, race, gender, LGBTQ issues, those sort of things tend to be the ones that are singled out.

And that's difficult in a way too, because the idea here is not that people are required to go into the library.

Students aren't forced to go in and read every book in the library.

They can be selective about what they want.

And I'm assuming that in a lot of cases parents can say, "Look, I don't want my child to have to take this book out, but to ban it so that," as you said, "So, no student can look at this particular book," seems like a large overreach.

When you were doing the research, when you talked to people about this, what was their rationale for saying, "Well, we just pulled the book because somebody complained."

Is there... Is that sort of what happens in essence?

In a lot of cases they just go, "Well, someone complained we didn't... We don't want to have an argument, just take the book off the shelf and we'll move on."

- I think that right now, what we're seeing is a desire to be answering to these challenges.

But the issue is that when it's not done in a considered way, you are actually tramping on the First Amendment rights of these students, because students do not lose their First Amendment rights when, as the Supreme Court said, "At the Schoolhouse Gate."

Those rights to freedom of speech and free expression do continue in the schools.

And in particular, with respect to school libraries, the Supreme Court actually has held that a local school board cannot remove from material from a school library simply because the school board dislikes the content of the material.

We cannot engage in this content-focused censorship that is happening.

- [Steve] Right.

- And I think, that's really where the issue lies.

It's that these processes that are taken or not taken, were acting in a reactive situation right now, as opposed to having a considered process that can actually look to the holistic context of the challenge material.

Many times what we found, Steve, is that people didn't even read the challenge material.

It was just a, "You wanna take it off, we're gonna take it off."

And that really does not do a service to anyone.

To our parents, to our students, to our educators, to our librarians.

- Yeah, and as you've said earlier too, the books generally have been selected, not on a whim by someone.

The books that are on library shelves have gone through a process of sorts to be there.

And yet, the removal doesn't have that same sort of context.

Just like, "Well, someone complained, we don't want to have an argument, just pull the book."

Which as you said, does a disservice to other students and other people in the community that would like to have that book be made available at their discretion.

The other thing that comes up too, and we talked about the content and obviously, there's a focus a lot on race, there's a focus a lot on gender issues.

What about when people went in and say, you know, "That book's just obscene.

I don't think it belongs on the shelve."

So... 'Cause that's the definition of obscenity.

And I, going back, you know, I remember the Supreme Court said, "We can't define it for you, but we know it when we see it."

That was one of the cases, years and years and years ago.

So, what happens when someone says, you know, "The books obscene.

How dare you have that on your shelf?"

What should I do if I'm a librarian?

I'm an administrator?

I'm a superintendent of the school?

How do I go about defining for them whether a book is obscene or it's not?

Or is it in the eye of the beholder, and that's just where it rests at this point?

- It's really a tough question, because we do use that word in a colloquial sense, but what it might mean to us as a conventional wisdom is quite different from what it means in a legal sense.

So, obscene material is of course not protected by the First Amendment, but a finding of obscenity actually requires satisfaction of a tripartite test.

And part of that test is to view the work as a whole, and to determine whether it lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

That is going to be a pretty high bar to be met by materials that I have been selected for inclusion in a school library.

So again, it's looking at the work as a whole, and trying to be able to evaluate in that way.

If you're a librarian who is having this charge placed to a particular book or set of books in the library, really it is something to be able to push back on a bit because what one might say is obscene.

Again, in the kind of everyday, we use that term.

It has quite a different meaning in the legal sense.

- Yeah, and you make a very good point, just because I might dislike the content thinking, "Well that's just horribly obscene."

If it doesn't meet those criteria, as defined by the Supreme Court, the law of the land, then technically it's not.

But of course, obviously emotions come into play here and we're not necessarily based on legal thinking when we're emotional about things.

When we come back, let's talk a little bit more about, as you said, there are books that are banned pending investigation, which is...

It sounds like an interesting way of, I mean, we can talk about this when we come back, of just moving it aside and maybe the problem will go away kind of approach, but we'll... We can talk about that when we come back.

Back in just a moment with Nadine Farid Johnson from PEN America.

We're talking about the banning of books and censorship of books in our public schools.

Back in just a moment on The Journal.

You're with us here on The Journal, and we're talking about the banning and censorship of books in public schools and classrooms.

Our guest is Nadine Farid Johnson from PEN America organization that has done a report documenting over the past year from July 1 of 2021 through June 30 of 2022.

More than 2,500 incidents of books being banned, taken off shelves in libraries due to a variety of processes or lack of processes.

One of the things you mentioned early on in our discussion Nadine was that a lot of times books or material are pulled pending investigations.

So, rather than leaving them on while the discussion is underway, the book or the material is simply taken off the shelf until such time as someone makes a decision on whether to make that ban permanent, or the book is either brought back fully or in some limited or different accessible fashion.

So, talk about books that are banned pending investigation and what...

If there is a process even for that really.

It probably varies, I'm sure.

- That's correct.

So, we do categorize books that are banned pending investigation as well as books that have been taken from school classrooms or banned from school libraries.

A book that is banned pending investigation is a title that has been removed during an investigation to determine what restrictions, if any, should be placed upon the book.

And in that case, it is still considered a ban because the access to the book that had previously been available has now been removed.

One of the things that we look at here is, is the student able to access the material?

If the answer is no, then it counts as a ban.

In cases where it goes investigations have concluded and the titles have been further restricted or banned as a result, we do use the category of banned in a classroom, banned in a school library as appropriate.

One of the reasons that we count this is that a temporary banned can extend almost indefinitely sometimes.

It can be place, kind of pushed out of the way, the process is ongoing or it isn't really ongoing.

And what ends up happening again is that there is a removal of the access to that literature for students and that's where the problem lies.

- Yeah, and it's interesting.

You mentioned, because that's the thing, it's sort of like, "Okay, if we do it, pending an investigation, the investigation can be ongoing for infinity, basically."

"Well, because that removes the controversy in the case of the school district."

And that probably is not the best response, but it takes the heat off at that moment.

And I guess... And that's part of the issue too, that this places administrators, superintendents, principals, librarians, teachers in the eye of this storm.

And yet, they're charged with educating students.

They're charged with opening up, you know, the vision of students, and yet, they're being targeted by this.

Especially librarians, they did that whole list of what to do if you're a librarian.

Things to document to keep track of if you're being harassed, if you're being targeted because of the books you have on your bookshelves.

And that that's a pretty serious situation for people.

One of the things you mentioned too is, you know, educational gag orders, because this is also a legislative issue as well.

You have certain states that are basically putting a comprehensive... A process of sorts, I guess you call it, on what can be in libraries and what can't be.

So, it's censorship from the state level down to the local level.

And that's documented in the report too that a lot of states have gone that route, either through executive orders or actual legislative laws.

- That's exactly right.

We actually have here... To say two parallel tracks that are part of the same overarching issue.

You have book bans which occur, as we have noted, and there have been 2,500 or so, in the past or over the past school year.

And it's important to note that this is across 32 different states, so it is not an isolated incident.

This is happening all over the country.

And you're looking at about 4 million students that are affected by this.

Similarly, educational gag orders have also been on the rise.

And an educational gag order is an effort to control what is in a curriculum saying, "Teachers may not talk about x, y, or Z topic in the classroom."

We have found in our recent report, America's Censors Classrooms, 137 different educational gag orders introduced in 36 states so far.

That's a whopping number and it's an incredible rise from 2021, which was only, only 54 such gag orders.

So, we are really seeing here something that is essentially in the water in terms of what's happening to schools.

What kind of control people are trying to absorb over schools.

And again, in terms of the overarching issue here, administrators are charged with ensuring that they are cognizant of the harm that can result from removing content for all, based on the particular viewpoints of some.

We cannot be examining the content of a book, for example, or of a curricular offering based on one particular note in the book or page in the book, or what have you.

It needs to be looked at holistically and we need to be cognizant of the fact that students' rights are at issue here with respect to the First Amendment.

- Sure.

And you make a good point because we're talking one instance as you referenced earlier, that you need to look at the book or whatever as a whole and then determine, does it meet certain guidelines?

Does it fit certain criteria?

And at the same time...

So you've got somebody saying, "Well, there's one incident, one page in this book I don't like, so therefore take the whole book off the shelf, nobody should see it."

And you have it, as you said, a small group generally dictating to the community as a whole, what everyone's child may or may not be able to see.

And that that seems to fly in the face of First Amendment issues, and just the way we typically have done things in this country.

So, it seems to cut across things that normally people should be upset about looking at it going, "Well, this is just wrong," but a minority has a pretty high influence, it seems in a lot of places about this.

And legislatures too, seem to weigh in, as you said, from the top-down saying, "Well, these are just topics you won't talk about."

We had instance where you probably couldn't, theoretically you couldn't talk about this topic in the classroom because it deals with race, gender, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So, you can't even talk about the discussion about whether something should be banned or not, because it crosses those guidelines in some cases.

[Nadine] - That's exactly right.

I say one thing is that it actually...

It also is casting a chill over teachers in terms of the teaching of US history.

The teaching of race, the teaching of other essential topics.

And similarly, you can see a situation in which librarians also would fear, potentially putting certain books out on the shelves.

And that's the disservice to the librarians themselves and their professional judgment.

But also, it disservice the students, because having these books available is critically important, not only for the students who might need something to... with which they can identify it.

It validates their own identity, but it also fosters empathy.

Building empathy, having other students understand another perspective.

That's really what we should be hoping for in our communities and so that we can talk about the issues even if they're uncomfortable and have these discussions as opposed to making them not available and having people read the consequences in the negative way.

- And that's a very good point.

We're out of time, and I know there's a lot we could talk about here.

- [Nadine] Yes.

- If people want to find out more, if they want to get involved in the organization, simple thing to do is just basically, probably search PEN America and that will get you through this report and the organization.

I mean, they can read all the details, because there's just an incredible amount of information that I think will surprise a lot of people.

You know, it isn't just a localized thing.

It's not just a narrow thing.

As you said, it's broad.

It's 30 some states and it cuts across all different types of topics so pretty important.

So, thank you so much, Nadine Farid Johnson, for coming on with us from PEN America.

Talk about this incredible topic.

And as other reports roll out, we will be back in touch with you to talk about those two because illumination, enlightenment should be a good thing.

One would think so.

Appreciate that.

[Nadine] - Thank you so much.

- Yep, thanks.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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