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    Naval Academy Censors Ryan Holiday’s Lecture on Censorship

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    For the past four years, I have been delivering a series of lectures on the virtues of Stoicism to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and I was supposed to continue this on April 14 to the entire sophomore class on the theme of wisdom.Roughly an hour before my talk was to begin, I received a call: Would I refrain from any mention in my remarks of the recent removal of 381 supposedly controversial books from the Nimitz library on campus? My slides had been sent up the chain of command at the school, which was now, as it was explained to me, extremely worried about reprisals if my talk appeared to flout Executive Order 14151 (“Ending Radical and Wasteful Government D.E.I. Programs and Preferencing.”)When I declined, my lecture — as well as a planned speech before the Navy football team, with whom my books on Stoicism are popular was canceled. (The academy “made a schedule change that aligns with its mission of preparing midshipmen for careers of service,” a Navy spokesperson told Times Opinion. “The Naval Academy is an apolitical institution.”)Had I been allowed to go ahead, this is the story I was going to tell the class:In the fall of 1961, a young naval officer named James Stockdale, a graduate of the Naval Academy and future Medal of Honor recipient who went on to be a vice admiral, began a course at Stanford he had eagerly anticipated on Marxist theory. “We read no criticisms of Marxism,” he recounted later, “only primary sources. All year we read the works of Marx and Lenin.”It might seem unusual that the Navy would send Stockdale, then a 36-year-old fighter pilot, to get a master’s degree in the social sciences, but he knew why he was there. Writing home to his parents that year, he reminded them of a lesson they had instilled in him, “You really can’t do well competing against something you don’t understand as well as something you can.”At the time, Marxism was not just an abstract academic subject, but the ideological foundation of America’s greatest geopolitical enemy. The stakes were high. The Soviets were pushing a vision of global Communism and the conflict in Vietnam was flashing hot, the North Vietnamese fueled by a ruthless mix of dogma and revolutionary zeal. “Marxism” was, like today, also a culture war boogeyman used by politicians and demagogues.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Year Among My Fellow Banned Writers

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      This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.Turning Point: More than 10,000 books were targeted for removal from school shelves in the United States in the 2023-2024 academic year.As a kid, I cataloged the books I read each year in a three-ring notebook. I read lots of books, not all of them favorites, but I was proud to read and review each one for my own pleasure, from fairy tales to books on the lives of saints. Even if I didn’t like a tome, I read it anyway. Every book will teach you something, if you let it.Now, as I near 70 years of age, I’ve made it a goal to read books that have recently been targeted for bans in South Texas public schools. In the spring, a church group approached school boards in the Rio Grande Valley and brought certain titles to their attention, saying that some of the content in the books was “extremely vulgar and offensive.” The group specified reasons for requesting each book’s expulsion, though some of the themes it cited — sexual abuse and parental violence — are also found in the pages of the Bible, which could also be labeled offensive if not read in context. The church group didn’t use the word “ban” — they preferred that officials “willingly remove” these books. This raised my curiosity.Earlier this year I thought I would make the group’s list my summer reading project, but with 676 titles to get through, I had to extend my goal beyond one season.A display featuring books that have faced bans at The Lynx bookstore in Gainesville, Fla. Lauren Groff, the best-selling author, and her husband had toyed with the idea of opening The Lynx for more than a decade and said that mounting bans and challenges to books, particularly in Florida, pushed them to do it.Dustin Miller for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Books About Everyone, for Everyone

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      This is part of an Opinion series on The New York Times Communities Fund, which assists nonprofits that provide direct support to people and communities facing hardship. Donate to the fund here. .g-goldbergseriesinfo a { text-decoration: underline; color: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 2px; } .g-goldbergseriesinfo{ position: relative; display: flex; overflow: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 1.125rem […] More

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      From School Librarian to Activist: ‘The Hate Level and the Vitriol Is Unreal’

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      Amid a surge in book bans nationwide, the librarian Amanda Jones was targeted by vicious threats. So she decided to fight back.One Sunday morning two years ago, Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Watson, La., woke up and saw an email on her phone that left her shaking and breathless.The expletive-laced message from a stranger accused her of being a pedophile and a groomer, and concluded with a threat: “You can’t hide. We know where you work + live. You have a LARGE target on your back,” it said. “Click … Click … see you soon!”It was part of a deluge of online threats and harassment that Jones has faced since the summer of 2022, when she was one of around 20 people to speak out against book banning during a July meeting at her local public library.A fight broke out over whether the library should remove books with content that some deemed inappropriate for children. Like many librarians across the country, Jones found herself caught in a vicious battle over which books belong in libraries — a debate that has divided communities and school boards as book bans have surged in the United States.But the attacks on Jones have been particularly intense, and unrelenting, because of her response: She fought back.After commenters on social media accused her of seeking to sexualize children, Jones filed a defamation lawsuit against two men and the organization Citizens for a New Louisiana, a group that has pushed to have books that they consider erotic or sexual removed from the children’s section of libraries. She co-founded Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, which lobbies against legislation that would place new restrictions on libraries. And she’s highlighting the threat of censorship and the pressure that librarians face in a memoir, “That Librarian,” which Bloomsbury published last month.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      RuPaul Is Sending a Rainbow Bus to Give Away Books Targeted by Bans

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      The star, whose show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has an international following, is one of the founders of a new online bookstore promoting underrepresented authors. The giveaways are part of its outreach.At a time of book bans and efforts by state legislatures to ban drag shows, the performer and television producer who is arguably the country’s most famous drag star, RuPaul, is the co-founder of a new online bookstore that will be sending a rainbow school bus from the West Coast to the South to distribute the very books targeted by those bans.He announced on Monday that he was one of three business partners behind the bookstore, Allstora, which will promote underrepresented authors and provide writers with a greater share of profits than other online booksellers do.RuPaul said that this sort of book website would fill an important gap, especially in “these strange days, we’re living in,” to support the ideas of people “who are willing to push the conversation forward.”In recent years, there has been a sharp rise in efforts to restrict access to books at libraries in the United States, and most of the challenged books are by or about L.G.B.T.Q. people or people of color, according to library and free speech organizations. Some libraries have received bomb threats, and others have faced closure over efforts to remove books. At the same time, states have tried to ban drag shows and restrict access to health care for transgender people.RuPaul with Eric Cervini, left, co-founder and chief executive of Allstora, and Adam Powell, co-founder and director of the Rainbow Book Bus.AllstoraEnter RuPaul. Drag has been in popular culture for decades, but his reality competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which is airing its sixteenth season and has more than a dozen international editions, has brought the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of drag performers to home audiences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More