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Recently, book banning has been front and center in the news. So much so, that the best-selling author of young adult fiction Judy Blume has noted that book banning “has become political… it’s worse than it was in the 80s” and expresses concern over intolerance in the USA, “about everything, gender, sexuality, racism” (McIntosh, 2023). The news is filled with current stories of schools and libraries banning books, usually on topics such as sexuality, especially as pertains to LGBTQAI+ issues (This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson), drug addictions (e.g., Crank by Ellen Hopkins), or race relations (e.g., Sula by Toni Morrison, work by Ta-Nehisi Coates) (Rosenberg, 2022). Even the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), founded over 100 years ago to fight antisemitism, has initiated a review of its educational programs and lesson plans as a result of national political debates; for instance, a classic staple of diversity curricula, and taught at many universities— the Peggy McIntosh (1989) essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack— is among the works now under ADL review (Grossman, 2022). As another example to illustrate the range of books banned or proposed for banning, a parent in Utah petitioned to have the Bible removed from the school district’s libraries, complaining that it contained “inappropriate and pornographic” material. The parent argued that the Bible contains mentions of “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” and thus under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has “no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition” (Kornick, 2023).
As psychologists, we have expertise in examining human motivations, group dynamics, and intergroup relations. Yet too often, psychologists fail to take a broader longer view that includes sociological and historical perspectives as well as individual ones. To fully understand the implications of book banning, it is worth noting some key events and historical examples that illustrate themes and reasoning from the past that will help inform current debate, regardless of one’s political leanings. The historical record clearly demonstrates that the practice of book banning has a long and checkered history, and the banners hail from both the radical political liberal left as well as the reactionary political conservative right. Among the most notorious events related to book burning would be Diego de Landa’s 1562 auto-da-fé in Maní, Yucatán; in this event the Franciscan, after learning that some Maya continued to practice indigenous religion rather than Roman Catholicism, ordered the burning of Maya books and images; the loss to history is unfathomable.
In the 20th century, there are sadly countless examples of book bannings. One of the best single-volume sources on the topic is Knuth’s Libricide (2003), which describes numerous examples of regime-sponsored destruction of books, archives, and libraries in the twentieth century. On the one hand, Knuth describes conservative, totalitarian regimes that banned or destroyed books, such as Nazi Germany. Among the most notorious book burnings under the Nazis occurred in 1933, when German university students, while many gave the Nazi salute, burned approximately 25,000 books, by such well-known authors as Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud (Holocaust Encyclopedia, 2023). Additional censorship by the Nazis is well documented, as in the banning of many artists and musicians now revered by the art and music world and treasured by museum and concertgoers around the globe, including Chagall, Kandinsky, and Klee in art, and Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Bruno Walter in music (Barron, 1991).
On the other hand, Knuth (2003) also examines book bannings under communist regimes, such as by Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China, and by Chinese Communists in Tibet. The range of government types engaged in such efforts seems to indicate that the phenomenon is most associated with more extremist regimes, rather than smoothly functioning democracies. Other 20th-century regimes engaged in book banning and/or destruction of archives (so-called ‘cleansing’ of archives) include cases in Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Russia from 1917. When I taught in Cambodia for an academic year, I learned the tragic story of the National Library under the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. In its radical, genocidal purge, about two million persons—one in four of Cambodia’s population—perished; often intellectuals, including those with glasses, those who spoke a European language, and Buddhist monks, were especially targeted. Cambodia’s National Library’s books were tossed onto the street by the Khmer Rouge to serve as a stable for animals. I am happy to report that the library is once again a library, and even features a small but potentially expanding collection of psychology books (Rich, 2015; Rich & Sirikantraporn, 2020).
While this brief article can only scratch the surface of a potent, volatile debate, what is evident, is that for psychologists to engage thoughtfully in a broader debate with other intellectuals and the public, an understanding of the history and uses of regime-sponsored bannings is essential to engage in such a debate. Such socio-historical contextual knowledge, coupled with psychologists’ expertise and insights into child and lifespan developmental processes, intergroup relations, group dynamics, and the social psychology of persuasion, will allow for more meaningful, balanced discussions of the topic. Given the lessons from extremist regimes’ forays into book burning and banning, it may be that psychologists can together seek and advocate for a middle way between permitting potentially psychologically damaging print materials (e.g., potential hate speech, exposure to explicit descriptions of sexual violence or drug use without sufficient readiness) to negatively impact children and young adults, on the one hand, vs. on the other hand, unnecessarily restricting access of children and young people from marginalized groups (such as rural LGBTQAI+ youth, or underrepresented religious/racial group members in our communities) from finding solace and support through potentially life-saving access to literature relevant to their experiences.
References
Barron, S. (1991). “Degenerate art”: The fate of the avant-garde in Nazi Germany. Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Grossman, H. (2022, September 7). Anti-Defamation League launches review of education content after Fox News Digital investigation. Fox News. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/media/anti-defamation-league-launches-review-of-education- content-after-fox-news-digital-investigation
Holocaust Encyclopedia. (2023). Retrieved from https://encyclodia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning
Knuth, R. (2003). Libricide: The regime-sponsored destruction of books and libraries in the twentieth century. Praeger.
Kornick, L. (2023, March 23). Utah school district considers Bible ban under new ‘sensitive materials’ law. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/media/utah-school-district-considers-bible-ban-new-sensitive-materials-law
McIntosh, P. (1989, July/August). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Peace & Freedom Magazine, 10–12.
McIntosh, S. (2023). Judy Blume worried about intolerance and book banning in the US. BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65142127
Rich, G. (2015). Internationalizing psychology in Cambodia: Lessons learned and future directions. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. Toronto, Canada.
Rich, G., & Sirikantraporn, S. (2020). Teaching psychology in Cambodia. In G. Rich, A. Padilla-Lopez, L. Ebersöhn, S. Morrissey, & J. Taylor (Eds.), Teaching psychology around the world (Volume 5). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Rosenberg, R. (2022, September 7). Florida teacher starts nonprofit to give away banned books to students. Fox News. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-teacher-starts-nonprofit-give-away-banned-books-students
