Confronting Book Bans: A Panel Discussion

Two national leaders in the battle against book bans, Emily Drabinski-American Library Association Past President-and Emily Knox-author of Book Banning in 21st Century America, shared their insights on recent trends in book banning, including what is driving book banning today. On July 31, 2024, they joined Torsten Reimer, University Librarian and Dean of the University Library, in an online panel discussion hosted by the University of Chicago Library.
Emily Drabinski (she/her) is Associate Professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She publishes and presents widely on topics related to knowledge organization, information literacy, and critical perspectives in librarianship. Drabinski edits Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies, a book series from Library Juice Press/Litwin Books. She is a contributing writer at Truthout.
Emily J.M. Knox, AM’00 (she/her), is an Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an alumna of the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her most recent book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom, won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom. Knox’s articles have been published in the Library Quarterly, Library and Information Science Research, and Open Information Science. Knox serves on the board of National Coalition Against Censorship and is the editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.
This event is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Library; the University of Chicago Divinity School, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago; and the School of Information Sciences at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.