Understanding and Responding to Book Bans with Laureen Cantwell-Jurkovic

Bioethics in the Margins

We are so excited to have our very first librarian, Laureen Cantwell-Jurkovic, on the show to discuss the impact of and potential responses to the onslaught of book challenges and bans that have exponentially increased since 2022. Dr. Cantwell-Jurkovic is head of access services and outreach at Colorado Mesa University. She has researched and published on information literacy instruction and critical thinking activism. Amelia and Kirk explore with Dr. Cantwell-Jurkovic many consequences of book bans and challenges, which have increased more than 100-fold over the past several years, including "soft censorship" and self-censorship that result from the large administrative burden that results from responding to thousands of challenges, even when a particular book is ultimately not banned outright. Dr. Cantwell-Jurkovic walks us through how local activities at the level of school districts and municipalities ultimately influence policies at the county, state and even potentially national level. She emphasized the danger of these limitations which can come from people on all parts of the political spectrum. She then explored the unique properties of books, which have a special ability to build empathy through reading fiction, and Kirk explored how lack of access to books could have downstream effects when healthcare professionals are not exposed to diverse narratives as children. Finally, the importance of protecting libraries and books at the local level was highlighted.

Being a librarian, Dr. Cantwell-Jurkovic shared many resources with us. Some are included here and more will be available on our website in the show notes.

Organizations to Know:

American Library Association (ALA): www.ala.org

Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF): https://www.ftrf.org/

Data:

Banned Books Week data: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/book-ban-data

• About Banned Books: https://www.ala.org/bbooks/aboutbannedbooks
• Banned Books Week 2025: https://bannedbooksweek.org/

• ALA Censorship by the Numbers site: https://www.ala.org/bbooks/censorship-numbers
  • Preliminary data for 2024: https://www.ala.org/news/2024/09/american-library-association-reveals-preliminary-data-2024-book-challenges