A wave of mostly partisan laws have sought to curtail what university faculty can say and teach.
Police remove a protester during a transgender rights rally attended by opposing neo-Nazi protesters, outside Parliament House in Melbourne, Saturday, March 18, 2023.
James Ross/AAP
The culture wars have been around forever, but keep taking new forms, and US variants threaten to spill over to Australia – as seen in the recent (overturned) ban on same-sex parenting books in Sydney.
Books whose ideas ran afoul of official church doctrine were sometimes cast into the flames – and literature with queer themes was no stranger to scrutiny.
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Australia has a long history of book banning organised by Christian associations and churches. A federal court appeal attempt to ban graphic memoir Gender Queer is still to be considered this year.
Cumberland City Council’s ban of books depicting same-sex parents from its libraries implies such relationships are unnatural or strange. What’s happening?
A display of books that have been banned in various places is on view at a community gathering space in Washington, D.C.
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Current precedent relies on a 1982 case in which five justices generally agreed there were limits on a school’s power to ban books, but they didn’t agree on why.
Signs in the hallway during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit on July 15, 2022, in Tampa, Fla.
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Moms for Liberty, founded in 2021 and now boasting 120,000 members, could ride its conservative, limited-government message to a position of strong influence in the GOP.
Some fairy tales aren’t so innocent.
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Meisha Lohmann, Binghamton University, State University of New York
A lecturer in English literature gets her students to examine children’s books through the lens of race, class and sexuality.
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivers a speech in Iowa City, Iowa, on Aug. 10, 2023.
(Geoff Stellfox/The Gazette via AP)
The hijacking of freedom by far-right politicians like Florida’s Ron DeSantis raises crucial questions about whose freedom is truly at stake in a time of tyranny.
Protesters in Utah demonstrate against a school district’s ban on the Bible for having ‘vulgarity and violence’ unfit for young children.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Distinct from civil disobedience, this legal strategy demands complete compliance with the law – even when there are loopholes that the laws’ creators didn’t intend.
Librarian Sharice Towles checks in books at the main branch of the Reading Public Library circulation desk in Reading, Penn.
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Librarians are defending the rights of readers and writers in the battle raging across the US over censorship, book challenges and book bans. That conflict has even changed how librarians are trained.
Salman Rushdie speaks at the PEN America Literary Gala on May 18, 2023, in New York City.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for PEN America
The constitutionality of the recent wave of proposed book bans is unclear, as the US Supreme Court has given states wide latitude to regulate what is read in public schools and libraries.
A banned books display in a US bookshop.
Ted Shaffrey/AP
Differences over what counts as indoctrination lie behind a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in Florida. PEN America’s CEO deems book removals ‘a deliberate attempt to suppress diverse voices’.
Book bans in Ron DeSantis’s Florida have censored beloved Australian author Mem Fox – for an illustrated character’s bath. But blanket nudity bans teach children bodies are ‘inherently sexual’.
A crowd of parents in Orange County, Calif., protest the firing of Superintendent Gunn Marie Hansen.
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New research on school superintendent turnover rates reveals that divisive political issues are contributing to the problem of instability among school leadership across the US.
A high school student in California holds a sign in protest of her school district’s ban on critical race theory curriculum.
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There have been numerous efforts to limit students’ access to books and curricula about certain historical and societal topics. But history itself shows democracy suffers when people are uninformed.
The outrage misdirected at Lolita – and its author – does nothing to negate the realities it reflects. Reading Nabokov’s novel now raises questions about censorship, book banning and human nature.
Author and producer Judy Blume and actors Abby Ryder Fortson and Rachel McAdams at the premiere of Are You There God It’s Me Margaret in LA.
Chris Pizello/AP
Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret is a coming-of-age story about identity, relationships, and relationships with your own body. It’s frequently challenged – and enduringly loved.
People wait in line for a free morning meal in Los Angeles in April 2020. High and rising inequality is one reason the U.S. ranks badly on some international measures of development.
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The United States came in 41st worldwide on the UN’s 2022 sustainable development index, down nine spots from last year. A political historian explains the country’s dismal scores.