Censorship Is a Drag

Libraries, long tasked with defending intellectual freedom, find themselves under siege with threats of censorship for carrying gender/sexuality-related materials or holding LGBTQ-related events. Efforts to censor materials and control programming threaten to have a chilling effect on libraries’ ability to carry out their core missions. Censorship Is a Drag pulls together contributions from across the library ecosystem exploring the significance of these threats and the ways librarians have responded, offering an intellectual and practical toolkit, in tandem with lessons from experience, to help librarians make their way through this new intellectual climate.

Jason D. Phillips is an Associate Librarian / Social Sciences Librarian in the Research Engagement Department at the University of Central Florida. He serves as subject librarian and liaison to Sociology and the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs. His research areas of interest are diversity, equity, and inclusion in library services and collections, evidence synthesis reviews in the Social Sciences, and issues surrounding librarian burnout.

Jordan Ruud is the director of library services at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, where he serves as liaison to the humanities disciplines. His research interests include user experience and intellectual freedom.