Article

Not Defeated, or Attacks on Literacy are Attacks on Liberty: Identifying and Confronting the Political, Legal, and Technological Changes Promoting and Sustaining the Censorship Movement

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Abstract

As the energized, closely coordinated, and politically empowered censorship movement continues to grind across the United States, education, knowledge, memory, and cultural heritage institutions are confronting different challenges from it. Public libraries face book bans; schools have their curricula altered; museum exhibits are censored; public media is defunded. A series of legal, political, and technological changes has increased the power of this censorship movement. While the parallel attacks on education, knowledge, memory, and cultural heritage institutions focus on different functions of these institutions, they are unified by goals of erasing the representation of marginalized populations and undermining the literacy of the general population. This article attempts to identify and explore unities within the facets and actions of the censorship movement as a means to better understand their goals and tactics, as well as ways to respond effectively.

Keywords: literacy, censorship, marginalizd populations, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+

How to Cite:

Jaeger, P. T., (2026) “Not Defeated, or Attacks on Literacy are Attacks on Liberty: Identifying and Confronting the Political, Legal, and Technological Changes Promoting and Sustaining the Censorship Movement”, The Political Librarian 9(1), 94-105. doi: https://doi.org/10.7936/pollib.9296