Free Republic

A new report from PEN America tracks restrictions on school books across 45 states.Restrictions on books in public schools have become “rampant and common,” according to a new report by the free speech organization PEN America, so frequent in some states that they are now considered “routine and expected part of school operations.” Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said the frequency and breadth of restrictions over the past four years has begun to desensitize Americans to the banning of books in schools. “There’s this numbness we have,” Meehan said, “toward not just book bans, but...

More than half of books banned during the last school year featured or were about people of color or members of the LGBTQ community, according to a report released Thursday. PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released data in the fall that found more than 10,000 instances of schools or their districts removing books from school, classrooms or curriculums last year, affecting 4,218 titles. The analysis released Thursday found that those bans disproportionately affect books about certain identities, including people of color, and also more often apply to certain genres, such as history. The...

Unlike some of my peers on the right-wing internet, I never got emotional about Liz Cheney. However, now that I've seen Rep. Harriet Hageman in action, I would like to say THANK YOU to the great people of Wyoming. I've been wanting to hear someone make this point for a while, and the congresswoman succeeded in making an anti-parental rights witness squirm. It was a subcommittee Hearing on “Free Speech: The Biden Administration’s Chilling of Parental Rights.” Nadine Farid Johnson, the managing director at something called PEN America, spoke out against parental rights. Rep. Hageman had a simple question, really....

So much for that whole ‘banning books’ talking point, Lefties. For YEARS now, the Left has been accusing the Right of banning books, calling them fascists and authoritarians, and all because parents don’t want adult-themed content in public school libraries. Asking that a book that provides directions for various sex acts not be available to a child at school is nothing like banning books, but we suppose they found a talking point that works for them so they’re sticking with it. Except you know, we have this thread with so many receipts proving them wrong. The next time one of...

When someone says something we disagree with, should we shut them up? In 1927, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had an answer: "The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." Well, in that case, the internet should have solved everything, notes correspondent David Pogue – it's nothing but more speech. And yet lately, the news is full of stories about people trying to limit other people's expression. The free-speech erosion is even happening in schools. Since January last year, according to PEN America, Republican lawmakers have introduced more than 150 state laws that would restrict how teachers...

Journalism is just one of the industries hard-hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic. While we reimagine journalism’s structures and funding models, what role might the government play in intervening to support the role of a functioning press—not just someday, but now? In a new report published by the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina, Penny Abernathy—a collaborator on our Cutback Tracker project—underlines the stakes. Since 2005, more than a quarter of the country’s newspapers have disappeared. In the same fifteen-year span, the number of local journalists working in newsrooms has dropped by...