A New Report From Ithaka S+R: “Censorship and Academic Freedom in the Public University Library”

Censorship and Academic Freedom in the Public University Library was published today by Ithaka S+R.

The report was written by:

• Ess Pokornowski
  Senior Analyst, Ithaka S+R
• Roger C. Schonfeld
  Vice President, Organizational Strategy and Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums

From the Report’s Executive Summary:

Research libraries are expected to provide and preserve collections in support of their institutions’ research and teaching priorities and to support long-term access to cultural, historical, and scientific works. In today’s polarized political environment, both libraries and universities have been at the heart of controversy. In this project, we examine some of the impacts of this polarization at public research university libraries.[1]

To do so, we examine and compare experiences among library leaders in two different contexts. We look carefully at states that have already passed laws or policies limiting the way programs, positions, or funds can be used to support diversity, equity, and inclusion or issues related to sex, gender, and sexuality, as well as states where these laws advanced in legislatures or regulatory bodies but were tabled or defeated. For the sake of brevity, throughout the report, we refer to these as “states with restrictive policies.” We also look at the dynamics in states without these restrictive policies.

To this end, we spoke to 10 library leaders from five states with restrictive policies, comparing their experiences to five library leaders in five states without such policies.[2] Based on these interviews, conducted in September and October 2023, we find that:

• Academic library collections are not being directly censored by policy or subject to large-scale, systematic content challenges.
• Decisions around collection building are, however, being influenced by state and university policy and politics.
• University academic freedom policies continue to serve as a defense against content challenges.
• University and library leadership require an extensive amount of political savvy, balancing commitments to different groups with sometimes differing values or perspectives.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, programs, and units in universities and their libraries are being eliminated, renamed and/or reorganized in a number of states. Even among interviewees who suggest that the underlying services and their impacts will be unhindered, a critical issue is that many of their employees are scared, which is impacting the workplace.
• Library directors in certain states feel it has become more difficult to recruit and retain top talent, especially when prospective employees or their family members are LGBTQ+.
• Library directors are seeking opportunities to speak to others at peer institutions about these issues without drawing public attention. They do not want organizations to speak for them or advocate on their behalf, out of fear that it will draw negative attention to their libraries.

Direct to Full Text Report (HTML) 

Direct to Full Text Report (31 pages; PDF)

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