photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

Both the right and the left are waging a war against books.

The right is focusing on schools. According to a PEN America analysis, there were 4,349 instances of U.S. schools banning books in the second half of last year. Utah has banned books by beloved children’s author Judy Blume. Stephen King lamented, “Florida has banned 23 of my books. What the [expletive]?”

Under an Arkansas statute passed last year and currently being challenged in the courts, teachers and librarians can be sent to prison for “furnishing a harmful item to a minor.” Red states Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee have also passed such legislation. More than a dozen other mostly red states have similar bills under consideration.

Speaking of the law in his state, Keith Gambill, president of the teachers union in Indiana, told the Washington Post, “It will make sure the only literature students are exposed to fits into a narrow scope of what some people want the world to look like. … We are entering a very frightening period.”

Progressives are fighting the bans. For example, the authors’ organization PEN America, which says it stands for protection of “free expression in the United States and worldwide” joined with parents, students and publishers to sue a Florida school board. Their action maintains books were removed from library shelves “based on an ideologically driven campaign to push certain ideas out of schools” in violation of the First Amendment.

Yet while PEN America fights book bans in schools, its members are advocating the suppression of authors based on their political views. Over 1,000 authors signed an open letter dated Feb. 3 that condemned PEN America for sponsoring a conversation between comedian Moshe Kasher and actor Mayim Bialik, who is on the record for believing that “Israel as a homeland for Jews has a right to exist.” In its sponsorship, the letter continued, PEN is “offering tacit approval for the Zionist, racist and genocidal regime.”

Both presidential nominees have expressed support for Israel’s right to protect itself against the terrorist Hamas organization, which murdered over 1,200 people and which, according to the U.N., also committed “rape and gang rape” in its Oct. 7, 2023 attack. Harvard professor and bestselling author Steven Pinker, who wrote a chapter on genocide in his “Better Angels of Our Nature,” tweeted, “What Israel is doing may be criticized, but it is in no way ‘genocide’; this is a blood libel.”

Last May, @moyurireads on X published a spreadsheet classifying 200 authors according to her shaky take on whether the author is pro- or anti-Zionist. The list, which garnered over a million views within a few days of the posting, recommended books by alleged pro-Zionist authors not be “purchased or promoted on social platforms.” Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of “Daisy Jones and the Six,” should be shunned for posting a photo of a Hamas hostage’s father who says, “I want there to be peace, but I also want my daughter to return.”

Chicago bookstore City Lit Books removed “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” one of the 100 best books of the century according to the New York Times, as a potential choice for its monthly book club. According to a news report, assistant manager Charlie Schumann wrote to members, “It was brought to my attention that the author Gabrielle Zevin is a Zionist and I am not comfortable having us reading something by her, especially knowing people would buy it from the store and she would receive monetary support from us.”

So where are we now? Red state legislatures want to ban children’s access to books based on their version of what’s harmful, not that of professional librarians and teachers. Members of the McCarthyite left call for boycotts of authors who do not support their views on the Hamas-Israel war.

So where am I amid all this furor? I don’t support either side. As in the classic 1972 song by Steelers Wheel, I am “stuck in the middle” with “clowns to the left of me” and “jokers to the right.”

When it comes to school libraries, I’m with Judy Blume, who said, “Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t have as much fear.”

When it comes to banning and shunning books based on who wrote them, I’m with President John Kennedy, who said, “We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.”

I stand for free expression.

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with creators.