This year’s Banned Books Week (Oct. 5–11) comes at a moment when the threat of censorship is reaching alarming heights. According to a new report issued last week by PEN America, “ Banned in the USA, 2024–2025 ,” there were 22,810 instances of book banning in U.S. public schools from 2021 to 2025. As the coordinator of Chicago Banned Books Week , I can see a growing climate of fear where even some librarians are wary of promoting banned books.

Ever since Banned Books Week was created by the American Library Association in 1982, higher education has mostly regarded it with a distant indifference. Those unfortunate librarians and schoolteachers had to deal with routine demands for book censorship. At colleges, for all of the threats to academic freedom, books seemed sacrosanct, and

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