Literary Activism

The State of Academic Libraries: Book Censorship News, September 13, 2024

Academic libraries are a backbone to higher education but they're being gutted. That, plus this week's book censorship news.

Kelly Jensen

Editor

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

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What begins in the public schools bleeds into the public libraries. This has played out again and again throughout the last four years as right-wing players attempt to destabilize and defund public institutions of democracy. Public library attacks have, like public schools before and now, endured more than book bans. They’ve seen budget cuts, attacks on book displays, and more.

It should come as little surprise that academic libraries are also under siege nationwide. The work of dismantling them has been seen already, particularly in legislation that outlaws diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, but in the last couple of months, these institutional cornerstones of higher education have seen it coming faster and harder. Much like with public schools, it is important to note here that the focus is on public colleges and universities. Those which are private are not subject to the same rules and oversight as their public peers—and that’s precisely why public higher education is so vulnerable. It can be regulated to the whims of political power.

To return to a story that began last year and continues to roil the institution, Florida’s New College has now seen mass book disposal. This comes after the state governor installed some of his right-wing cronies onto the public university’s board of directors in January 2023. Then, students and staff reported that the university was in chaos last fall at the start of the new school year; it was so bad that the American Association of University Professors issued sanctions against the school, which has only happened 12 times in the last 30 years. Among the changes at the institution under the new board, the school fired a librarian under the guise of reorganization. She was the second LGBTQ+ employee terminated just months after the changes at the school began.

Ringing in the new school year at New College for 2024 was the discovery of thousands of discarded books. This was no ordinary weeding project. The books were thrown out of a small library that used to be part of the college’s gender studies program, which was proudly killed by the school’s board. The school claims that the books discovered were not part of that program but instead, part of the university’s main library and part of their “weeding” program.

So it was convenient that the leadership of New College saw it fit to fire the lead librarian at the school shortly thereafter. The school claimed she failed to indicate why each of the 13,000 books removed from the library were pulled. What’s confounding here is confounding on purpose—the school stated at one point that no books from the gender studies program were tossed out but that instead, the 13,000 removed books came from the main library; at the same time, leadership cheered the disposal of books they did not want students to access that were part of the gender studies program.

This is what it means to destabilize an institution. Make up new rules, give several conflicting talking points, and hope that the sleight of hands will either sow more confusion or cause interest to disappear altogether.

New School isn’t alone. Indeed, academic library workers are finding their work undermined and altogether ended across the country.

In a mass cutting of faculty and staff at Western Illinois University (WIU), it was the institution’s libraries that took the most painful hit. Nearly every librarian was laid off, and the hours that the library has instituted for 2024 are not only inconvenient for students, they’re shameful for an academic institution. The only opportunity students will have to access reference librarians is between noon and 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. They will have absolutely no access on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays.

That is a whole lost day of library access with the library closed on Fridays, in addition to 20 more hours fewer than the spring 2024 semester’s schedule throughout the week. Those numbers are only for the main campus. WIU’s satellite campus will close its current library space and require students to go to a new service station and request a book. Someone will then need to hike across campus to get the book and bring it back. Really. How the institution expects students to access reference materials, trained professionals who know how to navigate information, or even a quiet space to study remains to be seen.

It certainly won’t help them solve their budgetary issues. Why would a student want to attend an institution without a robust library? They have other, better, less expensive options.*

Another tactic deployed in the attack on academic libraries? What’s coming out of Louisiana State University (LSU): no longer will librarians be offered the opportunity to earn tenure and those who are already on the tenure track or are tenured have only a year to make a decision about how often they will publish. LSU’s provost says this is all in line with the school’s bid to up its ranking and status with the American Association of Universities.

But the support of that from the provost is concerning. He says it’s not appropriate for librarians to earn tenure—a status that guarantees their job, as well as grants status both to the individual and to the university itself. Why? Because he claims that “the culture of a library is typically not focused around the production of knowledge. It’s focused around the culture of creating access to knowledge.” 

Librarians produce a lot of knowledge, especially when it comes to serving students and faculty in a college or university department. It’s not just getting students a book or an article. It’s teaching them how to access them and assess them; this is real work and real research. This kind of statement is blatant deprofessionalization by institutional leadership. Moreover, now librarians at LSU have to choose between a series of options that change the future of their careers. They no longer need to have allegiance to an institution or community because they will no longer have that job security.

It’s concerning, too, to see such a change come amid a slew of dangerous anti-library bills in the state of Louisiana itself. While the bill to ban library workers from involvement with the American Library Association did not pass, that pill would have directly impacted parts of LSU’s library services and library science master’s degree program. Other anti-library bills passed in the state.

Then there are the bomb threats. Within two weeks in July, four institutions of higher education had bomb threats directly targeting their libraries. Those included Bellarmine University, Arkansas State University, Hampton University, and Franklin & Marshall College.

What’s more—and what deserves emphasis here—is that students who pay for these institutions through tuition want more access to libraries. While New College is throwing away books with glee and blaming the librarian and WIU and LSU are making it more difficult to do the jobs they’re experts in and that are foundational to the success of their institutions, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL) is adding more open hours to their library. These are hours that students have access to places to study, to learn, and to access information because that was something they stated was important to their well-being and success in school.

Where students at WIU will have no weekend hours at their library, those at UNL will have access to their main library until midnight Thursday through Sunday. Students at other institutions, such as the University of Texas at Arlington, are also asking for more hours at their academic library.

Whether or not you’re connected to institutions of higher education, there is something that will likely impact you and your community. That’s your local community college. We’ve not seen a huge push yet for censorship in these institutions, but angling for it in the near future is not out of the question. This is because of who can sit on the board of the community college: it’s anyone within a taxing body of that institution. Just like with public schools and libraries, many of these positions are elected and down-ballot candidates. Even in the rare places where community colleges appoint their boards, it is important to see the connections between the appointed and the appointee. There is too much opportunity for this to be taken over, gutted, and destroyed in the same manner we’re seeing at places like New College. When you hit the polls, pay attention to who is on the ballot for community college trustees and ensure they have the best interests of the students in mind.

As said again and again and again: the losers here are people and those who are seeking to better themselves. That is the precise reason why libraries and institutions of public education are targets.

*More information on how you can help speak up on behalf of WIU library workers, here’s their website.

Book Censorship News: September 13, 2024