‘The Bible is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn’t steal it. It is an incendiary device: who knows what we’d made of it if we ever got our hands on it?’ (Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale)
Kim A. Snyder’s absorbing new documentary, The Librarians, is about books that are kept hidden from view behind paper roll plastered shelves or that are altogether removed. The Bible is not among these books, not yet anyway. An 850 strong list of books that might ‘make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish’ because of race or sex was compiled by State Representative Matt Krause, a Republican in 2021. Set in public school libraries across the U.S., The Librarians pays homage to several librarians, public servants committed to their uneventful day jobs, whose lives become upturned under a wave of book bans, political pressure, and even the threat of lawsuits, orchestrated by right-wing activists under the guise of ‘protecting children’. ‘Mums for Liberty’ use their ‘Patriot Mobile’ phones to intimidate political enemies, all in the name of defending ‘traditional American values’. With courageous testimony, frontline footage, and quiet scenes of resistance, Snyder’s film reveals how these coordinated actions not only threaten the integrity of libraries but democracy and the very fabric of society itself.
The illiberal turn in Europe
The documentary’s international premiere took place at the Art Deco independent Showroom cinema as part of the Sheffield DocFest, the city’s hugely influential international documentary festival, an ocean apart from the wave of illiberalism sweeping across the US. Or is it? While the UK and Europe seem sheltered from the assaults on libraries, schools and universities carried out across the Atlantic, the spectre of authoritarianism is looming large on the horizon also here. Far-right rhetoric has gained traction, and culture wars become the breeding ground for intolerance and censorship, both from the right and from the left. In a high-profile campus case, Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor at the University of Sussex, resigned after three years of death threats and online abuse over her views on gender identification and transgender rights. The Office for Students, England’s higher education regulator, fined the university a record £585,000 ‘for free speech and governance breaches’, prompting accusations of ‘perpetuating culture wars’.[1]
Library books are not the same as textbooks
Are the US book bans and the victimisation of librarians also a swing of the pendulum, an ugly overreaction to the extreme politicisation of schools and universities? When asked at the Q&A session, Kim A. Snyder, after a moment of reflection, thoughtfully denied this. The accusation levelled at the 850 books, making up Krause’s list, is so vague that it fails to provide reasonable explanation or legal guidance. It is a mixed bag made up of coming-of-age books, critical race theory and classics of American literature like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, in its graphic novel version. The book bans are a politically loaded gesture straight out of the authoritarian toolbox. In the landmark case Island Trees Sch. Dist. v. Pico, the US Supreme Court held that library books are unlike textbooks, or indeed any books that students would be required to read.[2] The Court’s adjudication on the removal of library books did therefore not intrude into the curriculum. It therefore differed from the pending Mahmoud v. Taylor case, in which the Supreme Court will pass verdict on the ability of parents to opt their children out of classroom books on gender and sexuality that go against their religion.[3] While local school boards have broad discretion in the management of school affairs, as long recognised by the Court, they may not, ‘consistently with the spirit of the First Amendment, contract the spectrum of available knowledge, ‘even less so if this was out of a
‘desire…to impose upon the students…a political orthodoxy…’. [4] The librarians in the documentary emphatically refuted the accusation that any of the banned books were obscene or that they could pose a threat to children’s wellbeing. But even if some of these books were able to make children feel ‘discomfort’, banning them is a disproportionate response, especially given that children have no obligation to read them.
Censorship of offensive content
In any case, as far as the situation in Europe is concerned, ‘offence’ is an insufficient ground on which to restrict freedom of expression or the right to information. As reasoned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the Handyside case, the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR ‘is applicable not only to “information” or “ideas” that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population. Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no “democratic society”’.[5] This case concerned the seizure by the UK authorities of The Little Red Schoolbook, a book aimed at teenage school children, which contained advice on sex and drug-taking from a liberal perspective. Still, the ECtHR found that the seizure of this book did not violate Art. 10 ECHR. However, the ECtHR paid particular attention to the fact that the ‘the work was some kind of handbook for use in schools’, and that it encouraged young children to engage in illegal actions. While back in the 1970s The Little Red Schoolbook was all that could harm children, nowadays children are routinely exposed to violent or sexual content online. A member of the audience at the premier of The Librarians wondered if the ‘Moms for Liberty’ were not worried about that. If they are only worried that library books might undermine their values, they should think again. In the words of Ronald Dworkin, ‘Censorship is different… Beware principles you can trust only in the hands of people who think as you do’.[6] The Librarians is a powerful documentary about the need for resistance in the face of censorship and a timely wake-up call on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dr. Irini Katisrea, Reader in International Media Law, University of Sheffield
References
[1] OfS, ‘University of Sussex fined £585,000 for free speech and governance breaches’ 26 March 2025, at https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/news-blog-and-events/press-and-media/university-of-sussex-fined-585-000-for-free-speech-and-governance-breaches/; S. Weale, ‘University of Sussex fined £585,000 for failing to uphold freedom of speech’ (The Guardian, 26 March 2025) https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/26/university-of-sussex-fined-freedom-of-speech-investigation-kathleen-stock.
[2] Island Trees Sch. Dist. v Pico by Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982).
[3] Mahmoud v Taylor.
[4] Island Trees Sch. Dist. v. Pico by Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982).
[5] Handyside v The United Kingdom, App No 5493/72, 7 December 1976.
[6] R. Dworkin, ‘The Unbearable Cost of Liberty’ (1995) 3 Index on Censorship 43, 46.