As book bans surge, the question remains... Who should hold the power to control what we read?
By: Swasthi Maharaj
Credit: Swasthi Maharaj
“Congress shall make no law… prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The US Constitution
That is arguably only applicable until someone finds the speech to be too offensive, inappropriate, or altogether too diverse for their children. Or, too not diverse. Looking for Alaska by John Green, for example, has been banned 97 times now for both his use of inappropriate language and “gender ideology,” despite Green’s lack of incorporating LGBTQ+ personas.
Book bans have been a longstanding part of American history. In recent years, the topic has reignited debate across the country about freedom of expression, parental control, and access to diverse ideas. According to the U.S. Constitution, freedom of speech and the press is guaranteed; however, in the past year, the number of banned books have tripled in number according to staggering statistics from PEN America. In 2023 alone, The American Library Association (ALA) documented over 4,000 different banned titles, stating that these widespread book banning movements are a means of censorship.
Revolutions, whether ideological, social, or political, rely on a free exchange of ideas. If books that challenge the dominant narrative are removed from public libraries and schools, what does this say about the state of free speech in a democracy? From six Dr. Seuss books being banned in 2021, to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 being consistently banned throughout history (ironically making its message more relevant), the banned book choices are often not ones we would expect.
This movement of book banning therefore sparks the question of who should determine what is and isn’t “appropriate,” especially in a society where our beliefs and definition of “appropriate” change daily.
From Plato’s philosopher-king political model in The Republic, to Hobbes’ Leviathan, a question that reaches far back into political history lies below the surface of this debate: How do we decide who we relinquish power to? How are we, in a free country, deciding what voices determine what books get banned?
Some school authorities are removing responsibility by relinquishing our freedom of speech to AI models. In 2023, the Mason City Community School District in Iowa made headlines by employing ChatGPT to assist in identifying books for removal from school libraries. The result was 19 books being removed from their shelves.
The district's decision to use AI for this sparked a nationwide debate about the implications of delegating such power over cultural and undoubtedly human decisions to an algorithm – a non-human was allowed to decide what was fit for humanity to read and what it deemed would result in “inappropriate” thought and action.
A more recent response to this delegation of power was stated by President Trump administration’s Department of Education in late January, 2025, “Because this is a question of parental and community judgment, not civil rights, OCR [Office for Civil Rights] has no role in these matters.” This essentially hands some of the reins of censorship to local authorities and parents.
The true paradox in the overall book banning scheme is that the banning of these books only spark more discussions about them, making them symbols for something larger. Could it be that book bans are inadvertently reinforcing the relevance of the very materials they seek to suppress?
Take, for instance, the recent TikTok trend where banned books have become “to-be-read” lists; banning them has potentially made these texts only more desirable for the curious reader.
The very act of banning books sends the message that there is something worth protecting or too important to let remain in the public discourse. When The Handmaid’s Tale is removed from school shelves in parts of the country, does that kill its relevance? Most would argue, hardly. Rather, it creates a deeper context for its message.
We can, and have been, debating for decades whether or not certain books should be available to young readers, but the point remains that such books, through their discussion of heavy and human emotion, allow for real and innovative thinking. The most telling act of defiance isn’t in banning them, but in reading and allowing our ideas to be challenged by them.
If a book is powerful enough to be feared in the hands of society, then maybe it becomes the one we need to read the most.
Swasthi is a freshman at UF, and an online writer for Rowdy Magazine. She has a passion for literature and poetry, rainy days, and physics.
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