subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties held a hearing on attempts to ban books in k through 12 school libraries and curriculums witnesses include high school students school employees and civil rights activists. ruby bridges beginning now on book tv portions of this hearing good morning. thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us today. thanks to all of the members participating. we're in the middle of votes. so there's going to be a little bit back and forth in classic congressional style in in a very happy to be here with the wonderful ranking member of this committee, ms. nancy mace. in 1943 in west virginia versus burnet the supreme court struck down compulsory flag salutes as a violation of the first amendment stating if there's any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it's that no official no matter how higher petty shall prescribe what shall be worthodox and matters of politics religion nationalism or other matters of opinion or for citizens to confess by word or act their faith. they're in then in 1969 in the case called tinker versus des moines school district, which struck down mary beth tinker suspension from middle school for remusing for refusing to remove her black armband in protest of the vietnam war the court-affirmed that neither teachers nor students shed their first amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate. in 1982 most relevant to our hearing today in board of education versus pico the supreme court rejected the effort by a town school board in new york state to strip. objectionable books from public school libraries. the members had gone to a conference promoting censorship of offensive and vulgar books and came back with a target hit list the kind of hit list, which is now familiar to us including slaughterhouse-five by kurt vonnegut beth short stories of -- writers edited by langston hughes go ask alice by an anonymous author black boy by richard wright and after widely brandishing a compilation of the most prurient and luried and profane passages the board actually over-road its own censorship committee, which he recommended purging only two books from the schools and went ahead and sent her nine of them when the case made it to the supreme court the majority sided with the students who recing that the removal of books from the school library affected a form of political and ideological thought control totally anesthetical to the first amendment of the constitution just as brendan who had into the court by republican president eisenhower announced the judgment of the court and delivered an opinion that was joined by justice john paul stevens who had been nominated by president ford justice harry blackman who had been nominated to the court by president nixon and justice thurgood marshall who had been nominated the court by president johnson. so this was a decision dominated by supreme court justices who had been nominated to the court by gop presidents, which is something that we need to think about because i hope ms that everything we talk about today will transcend the traditional party lines in board of education versus pico justice brennan found that the constitution protects not just the right to speak and to write but the right to receive information and ideas the first amendment plays the central role in affording the public access to discussion debate and the dissemination of information and ideas freedom of inquiry the court ruled. to school libraries and the selective removal of books from school libraries because someone considers the content offensive. directly and sharply implicate students' free speech and thought and school libraries the regime of voluntary inquiry holds sway the answer to books whose content or viewpoint you oppose or even deplore check out this powerful logic is to not read them or to write a negative review or even shades of voltaire here to write your own book and answer the first amendment. i used to tell my constitutional law students is like abraham lincoln's golden apple of liberty. it's like an apple and everybody just wants to take one bite out of it. somebody hates left-wing speech and somebody hates right-wing speech and wants to sense or in somebody hates hate speech about gay people and someone wants to censor speech about the love lives of gay people and someone wants to sense or mark twain's huckleberry finn because it uses the n word and someone else wants to censor ebraham. kennedy's anti racist baby because they think it means that babies can be racists. everybody wants to take just one or two bites. apple but if we allow all those bites, there's no apple left the freedom of speech disappears the way to save the apple for all of us is to learn to tolerate the speech you abore as well as the speech you agree with it's not always easy, but this is incumbent upon people living in a free democratic society if we cancel or sensor everything that people find offensive. nothing will be left. everybody is offended by something and that's why other people's level of offense cannot be the metric for defining whether your rights or my rights are vaporized. there's a famous story about lenny bruce the somewhat risque comedian from the middle of the last century and someone said his show should be shut down because it offended him and lenny bruce said from the stage. my parents came to america in order to be offensive and not to be thrown in jail for it. now during national library week a time to celebrate intellectual curiosity scholarship freedom of inquiry and free expression basic intellectual freedoms are under attack again in 2021 the american library associations office for intellectual freedom recorded the highest numbers of sensorious challenges to library books in its 20 years of tracking this data 729 efforts to censor nearly 1600 books and in texas, just one of these attempts to censor books implemented by state legislator has initiated the systematic review of at least 850 books in every school district in the state. there are over a thousand school districts in 8,000 public schools in the lone star state. this challenge will require tens of thousands of teachers librarians and administrators to spend hundreds of thousands of hours reviewing the books to implement a regime of censorship at a time when school resources are already stretched thin and states across the country are facing teacher and staff shortages. the vast majority of books being targeted are not mandatory or part of the curriculum. they are books of choice students can pull them off the shelves if they want to and check them out or they can ignore them entirely. what books are being targeted. well, some old favorite targets are back like catra in the rye native sun huckleberry finn, i would also let's see what they're also a bunch of these books. i brought here seahorse. we're gonna hear today from the great ruby bridges whose book ruby bridges goes to school has been the target of censorship moves the bluest eye by tony morrison, which is a who is a nobel prize-winning author kids book about racism has been targeted for censorship a book called hair love. the infamous anti-racist baby book little legends exceptional men in black history and finally little dreamers visionary women around the world. so these are some of the most common books that are being targeted right now. obviously, it's a legitimate subject for parents teachers principles and school boards to discuss which books are the best and most age-appropriate curricular choices for different age groups and grades. this is what educators do and the best ones include families parents and experts in the decision making process all across the country, but that normal curricular and library selection process is completely different from whipping people up into a moral panic over the use of this or that word or passage in a book and then demanding it's removal from a school library fashions and censorship change for a great deal of our history books were censored because they were considered indecent or politically subversive. for example the slavery system like uncle tom uncle tom's cabin, which was seized censored and burned in many southern states as propaganda many books are being targeted for censorship these days simply because they address racism or white supremacy as historical or sociological realities or address human sexuality or lgbtq issues because the protagonist or author is gay or a person of color or for some other allegedly objectionable reason, finally. quite sure where this is if you can. give me this i wrote a book which was censored called. we the students or i'm sorry, forgive me. i correct myself. it has not been censored yet, but it's being targeted for removal from the schools in texas. we the students was amazingly sponsored by the supreme court's own historical society it analyzes the constitutional freedoms of young people in public schools. it looks at a whole bunch of cases that affect kids in public schools like censorship of newspapers in your books and locker searches and drug testing and i am certain now that it must be the first book ever sponsored by the supreme court's own historical society, which is now being targeted for censorship. i only wish that the aspiring sensors would read my discussion of board of education versus pico at page 59 in my book before they censor it because it tells them everything they need to know about how it is illegitimate to strip books from school libraries because somebody disagrees with it. okay, so the books on the poster boards have all been targeted for censorship. we're actually banned from schools. this is your time by ruby bridges a remarkable figure in the american civil rights movement who we have donor of hearing from today has been challenged and targeted for censorship a censorship why simply because it said that a book describing the story of how little girl who was one of the first to integrate public schools in her native, louisiana in the midst of racist. backlash may make white children feel uncomfortable and this i think radically understates the powers of empathy compassion and solidarity that all children or most children have in our capable of developing it also suggests that the actual lived experiences of people should be suppressed if learning of their experiences would make other people uncomfortable a far-fetched unworkable and on just principle that cuts against the fundamental american idea of free. expression. all right with that i'm going to turn it over to ms. mace for your opening statement. thank you, mr. chairman. i should have brought my book in the company of men a woman at the citadel this morning. i brag about your book all the time. yeah, but thank you mr. chairman, and please have the opportunity today to highlight the importance of freedom of speech in our country as well as the important work to ensure that k through 12 curriculums and public schools serve our students. well the first amendment to the constitution guarantees the right of freedom of speech to all americans in the first amendment states that congress shall make no law a bridging the freedom of speech the government mainly set reasonable time place and manner restrictions in very limited circumstances. the government cannot police a speech of its citizens, even when that speech is disagreeable or rigpugnant when they say it aloud. sometimes we want to know what what they have to say. we don't punish that criminals in this country unless of course, you're maybe a main character in orwell's 1984 freedom of speech isn't just illegal mandate and strained in our constitution. it's essential element to democracy. fundamental freedom insures all views across the spectrum are debated within the marketplace of ideas and public institutions of higher education are bound to abide by the first amendments prohibition on restrictions on freedom of speech yet often in this country. we see attacks on that very freedom public universities and colleges frequently run a foul the first amendment freedom by enforcing broad or overly broad speech codes or by chilling speech across college campuses using bias response teams to investigate thought criminals. there have been disturbing campaigns on these campuses to expel students fire faculty or dis invite speakers who hold views that are considered to go against the progressive consensus or group think these universities and colleges are unlawfully stifling speech to coddle young adults at a time when they're educational careers in their educational careers where they should be exposed to a variety of ideas and perspectives while progressive activists shut down speech on college campuses. they're trying to hyper expose young children who are still learning to read. right ad and subtract and i can personally remember a story when my kids were in elementary school, and i was driving them home pick them up from the carpool line school that day and they had a government lesson on government democracy versus socialism versus communism and i asked them which ones best and they said socialism so i pulled over on the closest exit off the interstate and had a conversation about the differences and then they walked out of that conversing says no mommy democracy is the best form of government for the united states of america in an effort to indoctrinate our young students progressives are burdening curricula with devices and radical ideology such as race essentialism racial scapegoating and content of a sexual nature. that's not appropriate oftentimes for very young children. all children should be taught the academic skills. they need to succeed along with the history of our country the good the bad and the ugly we must also teach our children about the problematic chapters in our history. and we must also teach them about the heroes who lead us and have led us to a more perfect union. in fact one of those heroes today is joining our hearing today ruby bridges. you mentioned earlier a civil rights icon and author who made history as a six year old girl courageously braving a hostile crowd to integrate and all white elementary school in louisiana and in my home state of south carolina, we have so many of those heroic stories. that should be taught in our schools from harriet tubman who rescued 750 slaves in one night in buford county, south carolina to joseph p rainey who was the first african american represent in the us house of representatives who represented by the way, south carolina's first congressional district seat that i sit in today paul book school should exercise discretion with parental input and oversight to decide what is included in their curricula and what books to include in their libraries especially for young elementary school students, but no child attending our public schools should be subject to government and doctrination or exposed to radical. allergies while they're still building the foundations of their education instead. we ought to be teaching critical thinking skills. so college-age students can discern argue and act on those values when faced with open and frank academic discourse, and of course our high school students, even if they aren't going to college should be prepared to enter the workforce when they graduate i think all the witnesses for appearing today and looking forward to robust discussion on the first amendment freedom of speech and how we can together work together to preserve that freedom for every single american. thank you chairman raskin and i yield back. thank you miss for very thoughtful opening statement before i introduce our witnesses and swear them in. i just want to state that penn america just released a report this morning finding that from july 1st of last year to march 31st of this year. there were 1,586 book bands that were implemented across 86 school districts in 26 different states 41% of the band. had protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color 22% directly address race and racism and 33% explicitly address lgbtq issues so though, that's not a majority. that's a lot of where the action is. and of course there are the traditional targets that we know of like catra in the rye and huckleberry finn and george orwell's 1984 and so on now i want to introduce our first panel of witnesses who are all high school students olivia patook who is a student from york county pennsylvania. finally. we'll hear from christina ellis. who's also a student from york county pa. the witnesses will be unmuted so we can swear them in please stand and raise your right hands if you can do that. do you swear firm? the testimony you're about to give is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. let the record reflect the witnesses of all answered in the affirmative. thank you. good morning. and thank you chairman raskin ranking member mace and members of the subcommittee for this amazing opportunity. i'm olivia patouk. i'm a senior at century york high school a member of the lgbtq+ community and activist and the secretary and social media advisor of the panther anti-racist union known as peru of century oak school district in pennsylvania. in late august an article published by a local news source revealed of the century york school board had banned an extensive list of resources including books articles movies and more all written by by poker lgbtq+ authors containing bipolc or lgbtq+ characters or about bipolar lgbtq+ awareness in history. the book list specifically included materials such as i am enough or yeah, i'm enough by grace byers. i am rosa parks by brad meltzer and malala my story of standing up for girls rights by malala. all of these resources would help to not only aid buy pocket in lgbtq+ students and embracing themselves in their identity, but would also spread awareness and educate all students on the importance of diversity. when this list was pushed out as a banned book list. i was appalled central being the most second most diverse district in the county preded itself on diversity, but this band silenced by punk voices and frankly announced that their identity was were not welcome. with the help of my fellow students christina ellis the vice president of peru idagupta the president of peru renee ellis our communications director and rebecca delgada are our artistic director and our amazing advisors ben hodge and patricia jackson. we stood up to this act of discrimination. in the beginning we organized small peaceful protests that were located outside of the high school ending 15 minutes before the school day began. these caught the eye of local press and news outlets. this was no longer between a few students our story voices and messages were broadcast on many local channels and expressed an articles through interviews and coverage of the peaceful protests. media coverage helped the community receive 3,000 books from the list to hand out for free to community members and helps two community protests take place. it has been a hard journey in loving myself as a member of the lgbtq+ community. i've been surrounded by amazing people who help me through and offered advice friends who are also members of the community, but not everyone is this lucky? many kids find refuge and going to school and being within an inclusive community but as education on inclusion slips away that safe haven does too. i have heard slurs being thrown around lgbtq+ kids being made fun of verbally her abused and more. ignorance is very real. it is important to teach inclusion and equality. it is important to have representation. i deserve to walk into my school library and find a book with someone like me. this is why education on inclusion is important and necessary. without it those kids who came to school for safety and acceptance will no longer have that safe spot. too many kids have attempted suicide harmed themselves or been verbally or physically abused for who they are. too many kids are alone and don't have that safe haven. books that represent them offer them comfort and open conversations provide that safe place for all students. it is important to teach the students inclusion so that they can save a person's life just by showing them compassion and respect. we can't force lgbtq+ kids into situations where the only time they hear about their community and themselves is when their rights are being debated between students. we have a place in this world and in this community if i would have had open discussions representation and education i would have been able to embrace and love myself a lot earlier on. rather than sitting fearfully with my thoughts and feelings. i would have been able to learn what my feelings mean and that it is okay to be me. silence is deafening, but these books help to break through the silence and allow children to flourish. kids need to see themselves especially portrayed in a positive light. provide a space where they can celebrate who they are. give them the resources to help them love themselves for who they are. don't silence the voices that are finally beginning to be heard. thank you. is patook. thank you very much for your thoughtful testimony. and now ms. ellis you are recognized for your five minutes. good morning. my name is christina ellis and i'm a senior at central high school in york, pennsylvania. the vice president peru the panther anti-racist union i center york. to start off. i like to extend my gratitude to chairman raskin ranking member mace and members of the subcommittee who made it possible for libya and i to come and speak today. i like to discuss the book slash resource ban that divided our school district these books and resources banned were booked such as i'm enough by grace byers all are welcome by alexandra pinfold and even benami casa by dr. seuss. i remember the moment i heard about the band, you know gupta who's the president peru message me an article released by york dispatch a local news source discussing in great detail the type of quote divisive resources in quote that were banned. it didn't take long for us and countless others to realize these listed resources targeted the voice and representation of bike communities authors and creators. we knew this band new represent our district as a second most diverse district within your county. thus we created an executive board within peru. the boomers and i created our first desired. our first initiative was to peace lip protest outside by high school every boarding until the band was reversed. and is what we did. 70 plus students and even staff at the high school. so outside with signs like black lives matter and diversity belongs to education. we still in solidarity until our presence was known and soon enough. our presence was recognized news anchors like fox news and cnn picked up our story and after all of our news coverage our school board reversed a ban as of september 20th 2021 we did not rejoice at this news for long because we realized that there is so much more work that needs to be done. myself and those peru will contain to strive for equality and diversity now with only with our but within our community. the reason why i stood against my school district's book band was because i didn't want future african-american kids to go through some of the things i went through growing up because of the lack of cultural sensitivity in my schooling experience. i didn't want nobody students in general feeling like their culture didn't matter because in school there was little to no representation for them. here's where my personal story. an elementary school when the teacher would put a documentary on about slavery some kid to turn around and stare at me the only black girl in the classroom. i found myself avoiding bringing my caribbean food to lunch and fear the looks and snarky comments from peers because the food was foreign to them and sally enough. i spent majority of my k-12 schooling straightening my hair, so i want to stand out i wanted to blend in and not be different. i didn't want random people touching my hair without my permission and sadly still to this day. i encountered people who think it's okay for them to run hands through my hair. books that highly are differences and teach others how to address diversity are crucial. these books shouldn't be up for debate a slide. so presentation at the beginning of school you're telling kids to be kind is not enough. it is not a joke to it's not okay to joke about the way it's an introduce the dress or what they pack for lunch. these books can help kids educate kids on on various cultures and ways of life and we need to rely on our train educators to handle teaching these difficult and hard topics. this will decrease bullying and judgmental stairs kids will and because kids will learn to approach their peers not for a place of educational ignorance, but from a place of compassion and understanding this world needs where people who want to pay attention to others and not only themselves banning books of those are minority background and unique backgrounds silences are voices and erases their history and arguably is taken away the right to express themselves. these are words in a page that have the power to change a cold heart to warm. it's not indoctrination. it's education. thank you. thank you very much to all of the students for your really powerful and illuminating testimony to help us a lot. the first panel is now excused. please send our regards to your families and your teachers as you go back and tell them we're very proud of what you've done back at school. and also what you did for the country today here in congress. we're now welcome the second panel. i want to introduce our second panel of witnesses and i will begin to introduce them as they enter and are seated first. we have samantha hall who is a librarian from lancaster county, pennsylvania, then we will hear from mindy freeman who is a parent in bucks county, pennsylvania, then we'll hear from dr. jonathan widney. who is the vice president of academic affairs at the american council of trustees and alumni next. we'll hear from jessica berg who's a teacher in loudoun county, virginia. not far from where we are and last but not a witness who really needs no elaborate introduction for america ruby bridges who is a civil rights luminary and an author the witnesses will please be unmuted so we can swear them in for everybody would rise and raise your right hands. do you swear or a firm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. let the record show that all the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. thank you without objection. your written statements are going to be put in the record. so we have every word that you want to submit officially for the congressional record, but with that you're now recognized for your verbal testimony, we've asked you to sum it up in five minutes if you can do that miss hall you are now recognized. good morning, and thank you. chairman raskin ranking member race mace and members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to speak on such an important issue. we are here because books have been questioned challenged and banned at record rates of school year and their students watching from near and far. in fact, i've brought some of them with me as support in notes that they have given to me. administrators have made hasty decisions school board members have jumped to conclusions based on out of context excerpts and librarians scrambled to play catch-up to fight for our students rights. when books are removed communities lose the voice that that book represents. measuring the damage of lost voices is daunting and longitudinal we can measure the soaring rates of mental health disorders and adolescents many can directly correlate the teen mental health crisis to feelings of discontent loneliness and a lack of belonging. these are exactly the feelings that arise when we believe we are alone in what we are experiencing and these feelings can be especially brutal and and isolating and adolescence. the ability to learn about and appreciate the diversity of the human experience perspective and opinions is crucial to gaining a sense of belonging. we can gain this ability through our access to books and other resources. this is why a singular reaction to a book should never result in the immediate removal. of a resource, but instead be the basis for a conversation to understand the purpose of a library and the support and resources that librarians offer. if a student reacts strongly to a book it can be the start of a conversation with their family and trusted adult or trusted adult about the topic that caused the reaction. during the eight years. i've been a librarian. i've seen the publishing industry react and support to the need among adolescents for books representing a spectrum of thought and experience. books have made a difference in our kids well-being ability to think more broadly. be more innovative and be more empathetic. we see this in the many students who are standing up for what they believe in. those students realized early that they have a voice and that their voice matters school librarians have dedicated our careers to responding to our students needs and it motivates us to work hard as we keep our curated collections balanced. we work tirelessly to provide a sanctuary for students in the library the place that they feel safe. feeling safe. however is not always the same as feeling uncommon as feeling uncomfortable growth doesn't necessarily happen when we're comfortable. it definitely will not occur when we are stagnant or when we're uninterested or when we accept the way things have always been done growth is uncomfortable, but it builds grit and determination to learn is to grow and when we're in an environment that fosters open-minded communication the discomfort is outaged by the possibility of learning. open-minded communication is not fostered when we start making individual monolithic or one-sided decisions, especially without trained librarians input about books based on out of context readings. when we take this road, we are limiting growth. we are stifling progress and we are acting in the most undemocratic way possible adhering to loud minority viewpoints and not making space for all voices to be heard is not progress. librarians urge everyone to take a minute to consider why a book a resource makes us uncomfortable what it might be trying to teach us and what we are resisting to learn. while we are willing to fight and those fights are always worth it. they take time they take energy and most importantly they remove us from our students from our classes and from our libraries. for a while those lights were lonely. it seemed like everything was happening behind closed doors and many of us many of us have found the strength and space to speak out on the injustices of self-censoring and outright book banning. since those brave moments the army has grown parents students community members public librarians store owners authors lawyers teachers and local politicians have embraced the discomfort and join the fight. librarians are in it for the long game we fight with courage in our hearts to balance the shelves so students can see themselves and what they read find what they need when they need it and have a safe place to do. so if we don't have the answers, we'll help them find someone who does our democracy and our students well-being hinge on the access young people have to fully representative resources curated by librarians and teachers with the education expertise and experience to handle this work. without institutions that are curated by professionals to encapsulate the wide range of historical perspectives. we have no history without a location in our schools that a staffed by trained librarians. we have lackluster resources and ill-informed students without safe places to read think and discuss we have no future. we know librarians first. we librarians know firsthand our students. our world's problem solvers are ever curious through our students' curiosity knowledge is generated and innovation occurs. that is growth that is progress. that is democracy. what a wonderful statement. thank you very much. miss holmes freeman. you are now recognized for your testimony. thank you. chairman raskin ranking member mace and members of the subcommittee. my name is mindy freeman and my pronouns are she her i'm a parent from bucks county, pennsylvania where i live with my spouse since we were married 25 years ago. i'm speaking from the heart as a person who loves their children as a former elementary school teacher and as someone who cares deeply about our education of our youth i'm not a political person. i've been a registered republican and a registered democrat. i didn't even know what the house oversight subcommittee was until last week and yet i'm here in the most political place on earth. this is 2022 and despite all the major issues needing our nations highest attention book banning and censorship is a subject that we are now forced to be tackling and attack on public education diversity of thought inclusion of people and the ability of citizens to consume real authentic stories of who we are books have a critical role in people's lives. my youngest child lily who was here with me. today is a 15 year old sophomore honor student at our local public high school. she acts sings dances and draws beautifully. she loves to hang out with her friends ride her bike with her dad spend time with her grandparents and binge watch shows with me, you know kids stuff. lily also happens to be a female of trans experience. she is proud to be trans and we are proud of her. being able to be visible for others and seeing herself in the books. she reads is so very important. i want to be clear if there is one sound bite to arise from my appearance here today. let it be this one. no book made my child become transgender any more than a book could have turned her eyes from brown to blue. let me tell you a little bit about lily's journey. lily will tell you that as soon as she could recognize herself in the mirror the person looking back at her was not the person she was. the male presenting person reflecting back at her did not align correctly with her being. as lily was growing up during her younger years. she presented in what would be considered a more feminine way. as someone that had never known a transgender person while this out of gender norm behavior made my spouse and i questioned what was going on with lily. we did not discourage her from doing the things she loved. in early elementary school lily lacked the words insight and confidence to describe what she was feeling. as school activities began to separate boys from girls this only frustrated her. in fourth grade when boys and girls were separated to learn about what was going on in their bodies during puberty lily began to panic. after sharing her feelings with my older two daughters. she came to my spouse in me. we did not have the knowledge of everything lgbtq, especially trans related. but what we did know is that we loved our child and that we would support her no matter what and this is when our learning journey began. we shared with luis fifth grade teacher what lily was going through and her teacher brought to our attention alex. gino's book george now melissa an award-winning children's novel about a transforth grader and said that lily had the option to read it. we appreciated the visibility that this provided to lily as well as the support not only by the teacher but by the school for having age appropriate books accessible on the shelves. two years later in seventh grade her social studies teacher made it easy for kids like lily and students who want to learn about their lgbtq classmates to check out age appropriate books lgbtq literature. excuse me from his classroom shelves. these books helped lily's friends better understand what she and others were going through still middle school was a trial and high school hasn't been easy. either three teens two from her school are accused in charge with threatening and targeting lily simply because she is transgender. it's no wonder lgbtq youth have a higher rate of depression and suicide then their cisgender straight counterparts. having age-appropriate lgbtq books on our k-12 library shelves can contributes to an affirming and safe environment in our public schools banning and censoring books. especially lgbtq books in schools promotes divisiveness harm harm and hate instead of kindness. education and awareness schools are places of learning and when you take away access to books, it's a discriminatory practice. banning and censoring books benefits absolutely. nobody. it's a practice which limits freedoms of speech and expression and facilitates exclusionary practices. i have never lobbied on capitol hill run for political office and i do not sit on a school board. i do not plan to either. i'm a parent who knows firsthand how having access to lgbtq books in our k through 12 schools played a positive role in my daughter's life. and we all of us need to ensure that all of our children continue to have access to diverse books in their school libraries. thank you so much and thank you very much and thanks for joining us in the most political place on earth. that's right. and dr. pet lozny you are now for your five minutes of testimony. it's an honor to address the subcomity on civil rights and civil liberties. thank you. chairman raskin ranking member mace and members of the subcommittee for the last 26 years the american council of trustees and alumni has been working to protect academic freedom and free expression in american higher education. we are grateful for this opportunity to address these critical issues the data show conclusively. i think that the problem of academic censorship has reached crisis levels on our college campuses instances of speaker disinvitations on the basis of viewpoint intimidating shout downs and academic cancellations are a routine feature of campus life today with documented examples running well into the hundreds mountains of survey research data demonstrate that the current campus climate chills free and open discourse to take one of many many examples. so forthcoming act of survey of students at 12 elite liberal arts colleges found that 59% report that they are some what or very uncomfortable publicly disagreeing with the professor only 32% said that their administration makes very or extremely clear. free speech is protected. 54% said that they self-censor themselves at least occasionally and 41% say that it is always or sometimes acceptable to shout down a speaker. student self-censorship appears to be linked to low levels of ideological diversity among professors among students who reported self-centering very often 67% said that increasing the faculty viewpoint diversity would improve the camp for campus expression. studies of viewpoint diversity in the professoriate have found severe imbalances by political affiliation with registered democrat to republican ratios reaching as high as 60 to 1 on some campuses available evidence suggests that these disparities are not accidental 55% of academic philosophers and 38% of social psychologists admit to at least some level of willingness to discriminate against conservatives in the faculty hiring process. hundreds of universities have gone so far as to build bias response teams to investigate student and faculty speech students have used them to report on others for watching ben shapiro for ableist comments like on the other hand. they've reported faculty for giving a wrong look and young republicans for every conceivable instance of wrong think all of this in the hope of setting off a burdensome investigation that will at least be reputation damaging even where the speech is protected. universities that encourage students to inform on their peers and professors create an anti-intellectual dynamic reminiscent of a soviet police state where nobody knows what it is safe to say or who it is safe to talk to two appeals courts have ruled the bias response teams are exerting an unconstitutional chilling effect and yet hundreds remain in operation. since the syrian is also concerned with k-12. i'd like to make three points specific to it first. k-12 schools are funded by taxpayers because their mission is to advance the public interest curricular standards should therefore balance the concerns of families policymakers school board officials and business leaders while leveraging the expertise of educators not long ago school districts around the country were moving to kill a mockingbird and huck finn from reading lists because of the n word which features prominently that doesn't mean mark twain and harper lee had their books banned. it means communities made a judgment about curricular value. however much many may disagree with it. second conversations about public school curriculum should be occurring at the state and local levels the framers understood that educating children is a paramount parental responsibility. it can be delegated to others but it is precisely the kind of function. that should be kept close to the people in a federal democracy local communities will sit will settle on different policies and teach different books. that is the essence of representative government. third it is the responsibility of public school systems to teach materials that are aged appropriate the american library associations list of the top 10 most challenged books helps us to understand what the real issue that brings us here is today the first and second entries on the list genderqueer and law envoy are so graphic that parents reading them at school board meetings have repeatedly been stopped because the content is so obscene when school board members judge content too hot for adults to handle it isn't censorship to remove them from school libraries. it's their responsibility if public school systems were systematically targeting the writings of say civil rights leaders in response to parental or political pressure. i would not be here testifying today as justice harry blackman has written school officials may not remove books for the purpose of restricting access to the political ideas or social perspectives discussed in them. that is not what is happening in the majority of these cases. these books are being challenged generally because they contain age create sexual content that is neither necessary to create an inclusive learning environment or uniquely well suited to promote diversity of thought in conclusion the most serious threats to free speech in an academic context are occurring in higher education today not k-12 on our campuses self-censorship is endemic viewpoint discrimination is the norm and students and faculty are routinely targeted by school-sponsored bias response teams for the political content of their speech. thank you. thank you very much for your thoughtful testimony in miss berg. you're now recognized for your five minutes. thank you. chairman raskin ranking member mace and the subcommittee for inviting me here today to speak on this very important issue. my name is jessica berg. i am a high school english and women and gender studies teacher in loudon county, virginia where i live with my husband and my two extraordinary daughters. teaching is not a profession. i planned on but there is not a day that goes by that. i'm not thankful for whatever fates led me into the classroom because it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. however this past december along with teachers across the nation i was on the precipice of leaving the profession because of a political groups and politicians have done to education the crusade against critical thinking has instilled fear in teachers fear of repercussions for speaking up fear of being fired for doing what we know to be right fear of receiving actual death threats from members in our own community and the continued challenge to our professionalism our expertise our compassion and empathy for all of our students has cracked the will of underpaid and overworked teachers. today, i hope to give a very brief insight as to what we educators in english teachers aim to achieve in the classroom, but more than that. i wanted to share some words for my students because is the voice that is often forgotten in these discussions. the one thing i save year to year is the letters my students write and re-reading them. i was reminded that the biggest things students take away from their time in english is the safe space created within the classroom walls and the books that play a pivotal role in their lives leading them to lessons that extend beyond the classroom roles. but these are the books you're banning. books offer a mirror to readers so they can see themselves reflected in some way be it their gender their race their culture their identity or their experience and it makes them feel less alone in the world when they see themselves reflected students. do not feel erased and they maintain their self-efficacy the belief that their voice matters. and when i think about the books frequently being challenged the only connection i see between them is that they are the books that give voice to the most marginalized in our society. a few years ago. i taught a brilliant young woman who almost missed her chance to attend college because she didn't get understand the power of her voice and a letter she wrote. i will miss you so much when i go off to college, but i will always remember you you have taught me so many lessons inside and outside the classroom. you have changed my life because you showed me during a difficult time that my voice matters and i should stand up for what i believe in. but the political groups and politicians out there banning books don't want that. they don't want everyone to feel like they have a voice because the status quo is predicated on silence. and not only is banning these stories and censoring history preventing students from being able to find their voice, but it is negatively impacting my ability as an educator to connect with my students in a meaningful way. the entrance into these life lessons that leave a lasting impact on students is stories as one student wrote miss berg taught me a life lesson through her evident passion for the worlds of novels. she lets us explore the world outside the bubble that we rarely escape. this lesson is one. i will never forget. that is the power of books. they offer students a window to see the world beyond themselves in the hopes that they understand that what divides us as humans is infinitesimal in the face of what unites us. these are the books you're banning and it is a fallacy when political groups banned these books under the guise of parental rights. i am a parent we have rights in our students' education, but that parent-teacher team has been broken by the divisiveness of the moment the loud angry subset of political parents no longer communicate directly with teachers and instead they go straight to the school board and yell if you do not want your child to read a book, that is absolutely fine, but it does not give you the right to make that decision for every other student in the county or across the nation who might find a lifeline in the very book you banned. i understand wanting to protect kids. i want to protect my two daughters, fiercely and for as long as i can, but i also want to prepare them for the real world. so when i am not there to be their shield, i want to know that i have armed them with the sword of every story and the impenetrable power of knowledge that just might give them the ability to survive and through my work as an educator. i hope to make the world. my daughters will head into a little bit better one story and one student at a time and it was a former student who defined what we aim to do as educators. so eloquently when she said miss berg you are the best and most inspirational teacher i've ever had you taught me more than grammar in writing a skills. you open my mind and prepared me to seek understanding from a wide variety of perspectives. i am better equipped to process life in its complexities because of the time i spent in your class and i can't thank you enough for that. maybe if we all were prepared to seek understanding from a wide variety of perspectives we too would be better equipped to process life and all of its gorgeous complexities. thank you for your time. well, that was just outstanding and even with 36 seconds left over. so well done, ms. berger modeled a witnesses throughout capitol hill now i'm going to recognize myself for five minutes of questions. oh, i'm sorry is miss bridges here? you have been so patient with us. we've got the great ruby bridges with us and you are now recognized for your five minutes. thank you. good morning, mr. chairman, and this is mice members of congress and the subcommittee. thank you for having me. i am indeed honored for this opportunity to speak on this very important subject. when i was when i first heard about possible book bands, including the targeting of my books my initial thought was to avoid responding altogether as i thought it didn't deserve more attention and the efforts would naturally subside. however, as these bands have somehow gained even more momentum. i feel it is now important to speak up. i cannot understand. why why are we banning books? i thought my books are written to bring people together. why would they be banned? but the real question is why are we banning any books at all? surely we are better than this. we are the united states of america with freedom of speech. and every book i've written i have purposely highlighted and lift up those human beings as americans who were seeking the best version of our country like supreme court justice thurgood marshall who helped to win the landmark case that set me on this journey. as a six-year-old walking through the doors of this all white elementary school in 1960. i wanted my readers to know i did not walk alone. i was protected by a dedicated federal marshals commissioned by sitting president of the united states. i was nurtured and taught by a compassionate teacher. mentored by world-renowned child psychologists all of whom were white by the way and mentioned in these very same books that some wish to ban. they became a part of my support system along with a supportive community my village. my courageous family and friends, so when i share my experiences my story in these books, i share our shared history good bad and ugly. as a six-year-old child, i had no idea. i was taking a historic walk. my parents were sharecroppers raised in rural, mississippi not activists. for them education was a luxury they could not afford. they only knew that they wanted better for their own children. a mother that felt education would provide that better life. father who was a decorated korean war vet was skeptical. rightfully, so remembering his own experiences in a segregated branch of the military. he said he was always seen and treated as just another color soldier war hero or not. needless to say this historic wall put them at odds with one another. even though the same walk helped to change the face of education in this country. and i i became the poster child for the civil rights movement. the father never lived to see the change that this walk helped to promote. as a six-year-old i had so many questions. what happened? how did it happen to me? why that school? sadly no one including my parents could provide answers or they didn't want to. history happened and it was over. being six with limited capacity i often wondered if it was all just a dream. how was i to ever understand my own place in history? this was a part of my identity and yet. no one around me was equipped to discuss it, or maybe they just didn't want to. they didn't want to share with me. i was only six. let's face it. there was no black history month then and the textbooks we use were obsolete then and they are still obsolete today. i learned the full impact of my own story at the age of 17. when a reporter showed up on my doorstep with the norman rockwell painting which depicted my walk. until that moment. i thought my experience in 1960 was contained to my own neighborhood in my own community on my own street. i questioned if it really even mattered at all. but finally seeing this painting now, i understood my role in history. and it didn't come from the textbooks. used to teach me that very same history, unfortunately. the truth is that rarely do children of color or immigrants see themselves in these textbooks. we are forced to use. i write because i want them to understand the contributions their ancestors have made to our great country. whether that contribution was made as slaves or volunteers. my books are written to inspire new generation. to contribute to building this great country for indeed. there is much work to be done. so i say if we are going to have a conversation about banning books. then i say that conversation is long overdue. let's have it. but it must include all books. if we are to ban books from being too truthful, then surely we must ban those books that distort or omit the truth. i do emphasize with parents who are faced with answering questions that they do not feel equipped to answer remember my parents once stood in those very same shoes. even when my own grandson is seven came to me with a book about the united states presidents their names and their faces asking me. mommy, do you have to be white to be president? as a grandparent that truth was hard for me to look at. i had to be creative in my response. while also being truthful because my grandson needed to feel good about the person he sees in the mirror as well. my response was no, of course not you don't have to be white to be president. they're waiting on you. you can be the first. black president of the united states that held him at bay for a while. so you see i encourage parents and teach us to be creative without line, of course because our children deserve the truth the truth is pure the truth is good and we all know the same the truth shall set us free. as i stated in my 2014 ted talk teachers should be given the flexibility to teach. we must earn tie their hands. of these very qualified educators. let's celebrate. this bridges the forgive me. we're just over the time but i'm gonna come right to you with my questioning and i hope you'll be able to get you'll be able to complete the the thought if that's all right. yes, so we will now begin member questioning and i will go right to you to finish that point and i want to ask you another question. so please, you know, please brief as you can be. books celebrate our shared history and they should not be banned the integrity of books and history and stories within their pages must be embraced and preserved by all for all. history is sacred and should not be changed and altered in any way in closing. i would like to say the purpose of my books is to extend and expand education to children all children. no matter their color of the skin. i write to remind children that we should embrace both our truth and our progress and i write to show them that we are truly better together than apart in order for us to be the united states of america. we have to live up to our name. we the people must be united our babies all of them need to see themselves in our books particularly in school representation doesn't just matter is vital, especially in the pages of the books that we teach from when children read about president dwight eisenhower. they should also be able to read about the little six-year-old girl who made a difference during his presidency that little girl was me ruby bridges and i am proud of my story as is thousands and thousands of kids not just in this country, but around the world. well, thank you so much. i'm holding up right now the famous norman rockwell painting the rendition of it that is in your book which which is so wonderful and is indeed iconic the book. has been objected to there people want to censor your book because they say it may make white children feel uncomfortable which struck me is just bizarre given that you have a beautiful tribute to the teacher you love the most i take it mrs. henry and with her picture and she was white. you have a picture of you with a bunch of kids who are white friends picture of john steinbeck who wrote a beautiful essay about you tribute to eleanor roosevelt and so on but i guess they were they were rubbed the wrong way by this must be the most clean cut looking photo i've ever seen of a racist protester. we won't go to school with -- and i imagine they had a search for and wide to find the use of that n word as opposed to the other one. but what what is your reaction to those people who say your book doesn't belong in school libraries or doesn't belong in a curriculum about the civil rights period because it might make some white kids feel uncomfortable. do you think it will make white kids feel uncomfortable? and what's your response to that? um, my responsider that is that i have thousands and thousands of kids that write to me constantly who lift up my books and talk about how they have learned so much from my own story. um, i believe that yes, there are some parents who might find the truth very hard to look at as i mentioned in my talk. i understand that but we cannot hide the truth from our kids. it is history and history is sacred, and we shouldn't change altered in any way. well, thank you for writing. this beautiful book. ruby bridges goes to school and thank you for defending. everybody's academic intellectual freedom. i want to come next to his hall and his berg ms. hall your librarian. msberg. you're a teacher and i first i would wonder if you can concretely tell us what has been your experience of this new. wave of attempts to ban book censor books challenge books and so on. how is it affected you in your work miss hall you can start. thank you. i think it all stems from a misunderstanding of what libraries are what the purpose of libraries are and what librarians can do and how books end up on shelves. if those who are upset could understand the collection policy developments and all the pieces that go into curating those collections. i think a lot of the misunderstandings could be avoided great miss burke. yes, and so to my experience as a classroom teacher, it has not really changed anything because these books that are being banned are choice. they are not being forced on any student. they are books in the library. the curriculum is very different from the books that exist in the library. so the thing is you can decide for your own child not to have them read the book. you don't get to make that choice for every other child in my school in my school district or in the nation. and in fact, we all had a commonality in the great gatsby, which is a book on the curriculum. we were all currently reading even lily is i think missing a quiz on it today. so there's two very different sets of books when you're talking about a classroom curriculum and a library for choice. very nice. alright, well, my time is up, but lily, i'm happy to write you a note if you need one that might help. i'm not sure. i'm going to come down to mr. donald's for five minutes of questioning. thank you, mr. chair witnesses. thanks for being here. appreciate it by way of background. i served in florida's legislature. i was a chair of two education subcommittees. i wrote legislation about providing people who live within the county the ability to review all material whether it's classroom or library material and that all taxpayers whether they are parents or living residing the county should have an ability to review that material and examine it because they're the ones that pay for it mrs. berg. i know you're virginia, ms. helena your pennsylvania. i will describe for you the procurement process in florida any material whether it's in the library or in the classroom is actually approved by the state board of education to stay board of education goes through their their material procurements. they give a list of what is what they view is being responsible material for school. for the school system that list then goes down to the school districts school district administrators review the list. they provide a list of what they feel should be acquired. the school board then votes on the recommendations from the administrators in order to provide the dollars to actually purchase those materials and that is what actually ends up in the classroom or in the library. there might be a slight variation of that with the library but by and large the administrators bring a list of materials to be acquired school boards vote on them. that's how they show up. is that true? yes to my knowledge. it's a little different in pennsylvania. there's a lot more local control. okay fair enough. that's fair. but can we at least agree for the premise of the of what we're discussing that school boards are that authorize purchases? yes does a school board have the legal authority and the taxing authority to decide what goes in and out of libraries and classrooms? it's my understanding that school board policy places the superintendent in a position to make those and delegate those decisions. does the elective school board have a responsibility to decide on the funding necessary to either require material or keep material in classrooms into a libraries. yes or no. i think in terms of loudoun county. we also have a board of supervisors which approves our budget and again like miss hall said, it's our superintendent who has decisions in both staffing and allocation of resources. so when material is when the materials allowed to come in or there is a decision to remove material is it just done at the behest of ao group or is there actually a vote of somebody whether it is the school board the board of supervisors or even the decision of the superintendent is it that person's decision or that body's decision to remove said material? not always most libraries have weeding processes with the removal of books in a general consensus, especially in nonfiction literature where we need to keep updated and information accurate and that is a process that is trusted to the experts the librarians to be able to do that process without any voting. well, i would argue miss hall that at the end of the day you might what is going to sit in a library, but the funding comes from the taxing authority and if they choose not to fund that purchase they choose to remove that purchase the responsibility falls with them. so if the body politics the parents that live in a community decide that they find material objectionable and they go to the elected their elected representatives who have authority over the school district and they vote to remove material. wouldn't you say that is the appropriate way of representative democracy is supposed to work. better question. here's the better question. should parents have the ability to have their voices heard about material that they think should be in front of their children whether it is mandatory or whether it is optional. do you think parents should have that ability to voice their opinions? yes, absolutely as i said in my statement and they do have that right the books that are being banned are a majority of the books from library, which are complete choice. they are not the books in our curriculum or required reading you absolutely have a say in what your child should be able to read but they're no longer coming to us the professionals that i got one question right finish. my answer. the gentleman has to talk about the gentleman 45 seconds. i gotta like parents have to say just a sin they don't have a say for everybody you'll get a chance. it's funny. i would not say to parents have the right to say for other parents. what i am saying is do parents or a large part of the community at large have an ability to lobby or engage with their elected officials on the local level to decide. what's in the room. i would say the answer to that is yes, ms. freeman quick question for you. i know that i understand the situation. you laid out with your child. i have three sons. i could completely understand what would you and your spouse are having to deal with go through explain support your child completely understand that. if the material was not in your child's library, would you be able to still acquire that material through amazon through barnes and nobles or anywhere else? personally me. yes, but not every parent has that opportunity to do that or every child feels safe enough. and has that environment and i think this is important. the gentleman's time is right, but you can finish this freeman. i appreciate your answer the point. i'm really trying to make is is that we have many parents who have very different objectives and they all should be respected in this discussion. so it's to say to make the argument that books are being banned when they are going through the legal course of action to talk to their representatives i think is very hyperbolic and is not actually correct about the process that is being used to decide what materials are in or out of the classroom with that i yield back. thank you for the leeway, mr. chairman. yeah, you bet mr. dante and i would also just ask you to read page 59 in my book read the students about board of education versus pico which dealt with just precisely the process you're talking about. but where the supreme court still said you can't strip books from public school libraries because someone disagrees with the viewpoint or the content there and now i'm going to come to mr. lee for her five minutes of questioning. thank you so much. chairman raskin. hi lily. how are you? um, you know, i'm a mother of two raising, you know, two muslim in our country. and it's been very difficult. but you know miss bridges i want to thank you so much. because what you said really resonated with me, i know i get emotional every time. i think of my two boys. you know our children. they just simply want to exist. as they are they want to be loved. they want to feel human. you know, there's so much dehumanization happening. just even at a young age. and you only want to feel like they belong. and it's so hard because i think my colleague wasserman schultz was right and there's some things that we just have to understand. that even some of the stuff that we just want to see right that it also has to be available so that we know. just the impact and the detriment that it can have on our society. you know, i can't imagine i mean 850 books chairman. have been challenged in, texas. 62% of them address lgbtq plus issues 8% address race and racism when we have an issue in our country anti-blackness exist in our country. we should be constantly right now working in addressing it because it is a disease that kills if by suicide or by violence and so much more. you know miss bridges something that you testify that when you were in school, you didn't see any of those stories the images. i want to tell you, you know, my son saw this image. he heard me talking about it. there was this image in usa today depicting muslims as like nazis. it was awful. it was like a skeleton image and it said allah walk. but which means god is great on the form and you know, i'm talking to his dad and i'm like, oh my god people see this. they're gonna want to kill us. right, my son walks in miss bridges and he know he says he goes mama. don't worry. he was nine. he was don't worry if somebody asks for muslim, i will lie and tell them i'm not miss freeman that devastated me that my child didn't feel like he could exist because he's hearing me talk about these things. but also i want him to be able to pick up a book and see somebody of his faith or somebody that had that same lived experiences of being muslim in america or being a child a palestinian father or a mother who grew up, you know in detroit in the most beautiful blackest city in the country. so this is really a really hard hearing. i mean, i love you rest, but you always have the most difficult parents. chairman, and i just you know i have so many questions, but i just i just hope my colleagues do understand the importance in the human impact, you know. you have a huge role miss hall. you know, i grew up at the bookmobile. remember the bookmobile and i didn't speak english when i started school and i was able to get up there and get the book that i needed and i loved it because of course it was a latina. that was there that helped me understand. oh, wow, you know brown girls are in books, you know, and it was also the teacher that i was really shy if you can imagine me being shy miss berg, but my first debate hearing i got up and choked, but it was an amazing teacher mrs. marshall. who showed me that i had a voice? this is so difficult because it's not just about the books. right about being human in our country. and stop politicizing it we need to see ourselves in our country. and so i just look forward to the day when our children can read the history. right in a class about the sad hateful bigots who tried to drag america backwards. and i hope it inspires him to also be fighters like lily and like the witnesses here today who stopped them dead in their tech and their tracks. i'm with you. i just want you all to know i really appreciate your courage being here. i could ask you all kinds of questions, but i feel like i'm speaking to the choir, but i'm happy that we're doing this because i think bringing it to the halls of congress makes it more real and at least they can see some of us some of us do see them and we do see them as human beings. thank you, and i yield well, thank you for that. beautiful moving statement is to leave. what an honor it is to get to serve with her. hearing is called back to order we resume with questioning from our distinguished ranking member ms. mace of south carolina. thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you all for your patience today, ms. ruby bridges great to have you have such someone who's such a historical figure in the civil rights movement here today. we want to thank you for your time. and for everyone who's here today, i know it took probably most of time out of your day and out of out of work and school and everything and i appreciate mr. chairman. i do have a unanimous consent that i want to enter into the record when this is over and if for a waving books around here's mine and the company of men and women at the citadel that's not been banned yet as far as as i know and probably can get it used for a dollar on ebay. but nonetheless i had some questions. i want to follow up on from my colleagues earlier today and miss berg. i want to thank you for your time today. i have a few yes or no questions that i want to ask the panelists this afternoon. and the first one is berg does a state superintendent of education have a role in defining curriculum for students of that state? yes or no. so that's more than a yes or no question. yes or no does a state superintendent of education have a role in determining the curriculum of that how curriculum works what about the school board? so does school boards have a say in shaping curriculum in states education. that's not how curriculum what about parents do parents have a say in curriculum and their kids' education. i wrote a curriculum. that's not how it works how they don't want to play yes or no, so i believe because that's not a yes or no question. it is yes or no question in a democracy and in determining the outcome of education as a daughter of a retired school teacher as a parent single working mom of two kids. i do believe that myself and their dad have a say in the outcome in the curriculum of my kids' education and ms. holt. thank you for being here today and thank you for bringing your experience as a librarian with us this afternoon. so are the only libraries in the united states school libraries. are those the only public libraries in the us. no so are libraries that maybe municipalities states or counties also create in different states across the country. i believe they're known as public libraries, right? so is there anything that prevents a student from going to a public library if they can't find a book they want to read and their school library transportation would be the main one. okay. so if are there any other are they allowed to go to public library or students allowed to go to public library school libraries if they have transportation, that would be apparent decision. okay, are there other places where students or parents can get books? maybe a bookstore like a physical bookstore like a barnes and noble bookstore? perhaps if they had the financial meet and parents buy books online like from amazon perhaps if they have the financial, can you go to a place like goodwill and buy a book for less than a dollar or maybe even get it for free? goodwill selection is certainly not as expansive as those curious or other books stores. so is so what you're saying is there's more than one opportunity for a student or a parent to get a book to their kids liking it's not just they're not only limited to public schools. they can get a book from a lot of different places even a coffee shop if they wanted to write. yes, and you mentioned in your testimony earlier today about students having safe spaces to read is a classroom of safe space to read. i believe that depends on the classroom. okay, what about school libraries or school libraries safe places to read. i also think that depends on the individual library space our kids safe to read when they're at home not always our most kids we think safe to read it. well, they're at home. i do not have the numbers to represent. okay, and then i had some additional questions if a student wanted to get an lgbtq book that wasn't in a school library. could they get it at a public library would available in a public library if they had the transportation and means to get but would a lgbtq book be available in a public library course, okay, or a book of any other nature and i don't have much time left. i want to get to mr. pedushki probably apologize if i'm not saying your name, right and we talked you talked a lot about extensively about free speech about free speech on college campuses. for example, there are a lot of examples of censored speech even people who are against censoring want to censor people because they don't believe in their beliefs like there's some people out there that want to ban me from going on fox news because they don't agree with me, but we're gonna not stop doing that and even some cases people are attacked for their beliefs. i've had my house spray painted last summer by someone who disagreed with my political beliefs. i've had my car keyed for the same thing and sometimes on college campuses students cannot don't have the freedom of speech. so can you explain to us why freedom of speech is so important in the united? 8 of america absolutely many reasons i talked about the importance of expressing different viewpoints to learn about other people's goodwill. you have to come in contact with those things already universities are also places where you have political scientists economists if everybody can freely explore issues. we're going to refine public policy and the student leaders in those classrooms are going to learn how to solve today's problems a lot better if faculty are afraid to talk about things like racial inequality and do so in a truly wide-ranging way. we're not going to come up with the new solutions that the country needs. thank you. and before i run out of time chairman raskin, i did want to ask unanimous consent to enter the following article into the record from my local hometown paper the post and courier regarding a college that banned a political club a nonpartisan political club a lawsuit was filed and this the college has pay the students legal fees in 20,000 and this article details how the local college tried to denied access to funding and meeting spaces on a college campus. a political group that was had no political affiliation after that lawsuit the college changes policy regarding how they treat students and freedom of speech without objection. thank you nailed back. thank you for your questioning. i think that a couple members are on their way back miss presley mr. jordan. so let me just ask a few questions. i had sort of everybody and we could just go down the the panel there. i think it's easy for us to recognize when something's actual censorship, you know in violation of the supreme court's decision in board of education versus pico when schools are saying we don't like catch run the rye and we don't like native sun and they offended some pressure group and we're going to remove them or in the higher ed context. we're not going to hire someone who teaches critical race theory or we're not going to hire someone who's a conservative or a liberal or what have you that's easy but a number of you have talked about the somewhat. or ethereal question of the climate of what the feelings are like and that's much harder to put our finger on that. you know, i think one of our colleagues before said, you know, even as i think a 40 year old who was involved in politics in a graduates student, he's still felt he couldn't really express his feelings about something and we know a lot of lgbt q people feel. well, maybe nobody has said i can't talk about my sexual orientation. maybe they haven't passed don't say gay yet in my state, but i still feel stifled about it. how do we cultivate the values of? tolerance and acceptance such that we don't have the informal mechanisms of marginalizing people and maybe we can just start with ms. berg and you know work our way down mr. president. yes, absolutely, mr. lesnee, and i were actually having a great conversation and i said the one thing that i foster my class with it being a safe space is the ability to have these conversations regardless of your viewpoint and i asked students. you know, what do you want to discuss and it's always these major issues that are going on outside in our world and i say one rule one rule only if you want to talk about this you show respect you don't have we're not here to all agree with each other. we're here to listen and you have to listen as much as you talk. and that is truly what is giving me hope for the future because my teenagers can do it. i hope we can you know talk and listen and just respect one another because you want them to have this access to the conversation to again hopefully change our future and you clearly model those values of respect and tolerance. so thank you for that. yes, mr. punishi, so i think every constituency has something to do administrators need to tear down their bias response teams, and they need to fix the policies, but they should also model a tolerance of other viewpoints. so presidents and provo should go to talks on every side of the aisle and they should make sure that we're inviting speakers to to campus to discuss topics on every side of the aisle faculty need to hire faculty. they disagree with right the biggest problem. we see with faculty search faculty search committees is that they're duplicating themselves and so political science and philosophy and literature. they become basically viewpoint monocultures and students need to we need to help students understand the importance of free and open discourse. and of civil discourse, and so i think we need to incorporate training modules into first-year seminars faculty need to remind students that you know, we don't that this is a place for free and open debate and that they shouldn't be using social media to shame people who are expressing disabled viewpoints. yeah, i appreciate that. miss friedman. thank you. i think miss berg said a lot of what i was going to say, but i think we do better when we listen to each other's stories and these stories are in the books that we read in the classroom in the school libraries. and with me you heard when i talked about the lgbtq books particularly for my family and learning about the people that we need to work with whether it be in the school in the community even when you get out into the real world, so i just think it's important that we do better when we know about each other all of us and and it's within our books that we learn about each other listening to other. thank you. and miss. hope before i come to mr. jordan for his questioning. so our echo everyone's thoughts and what i'm hearing is that we need to build tolerance and we need to build empathy and how we do that is by starting. through literature and we allow our youngest learners to be comfortable. when they're uncomfortable and being able to feel like they can ask questions and express different viewpoints in ways that have been modeled through even age appropriate children's stories all the way up through novels at the high school level. very good. well, thank you all for your thoughtful answers to to that question and i'm going to yield to mr. jordan for his five minutes. thank you, mr. chairman. dr. padlusny i get that close apologize. all right. i'll call you doctor from now on. i think the i'll just stick with that. what's the what do you think the biggest threat to right right now? where's the biggest concerns about i think the two biggest problems are lack of viewpoint diversity as john stewart mill explains. it's not enough to have free speech or free expression rights. you need to be being presented with ideas that challenge you to think outside of your comfort zone or outside of the box. i guess i'm asking is are with that more. so on college campuses are or and oh, i think i think the situation in college campus is much worse. yeah much worse. we have all the way we get we got what we got safe space is and you know where we can go and you can't be triggered or whatever and people can't say that you got free speech zones miss bergen. i were actually just talking about the fact that a lot of the things you put trigger warnings on in college or a lot of the things that students are trying to remove from the curriculum like depictions of rape and classical literature. those are the things that they are talking about in middle school and in high school. well, so i guess in when it comes out, you know elementary or you know primary primary education that that's that's about what's appropriate for kids. that's that's a different debate than college campuses adults free. speech. is that right? absolutely, right. so i think it's perfectly reasonable for k-12 to ask are these resources while tailored to our educational objectives and so you can never remove a book for to restrict access to political ideas or social perspectives, right? however, and this is from justice blackmon writing in in pico first amendment principles would allow a school board to refuse to make a book available to students because it contains offensive language or because it is psychologically or intellectually inappropriate for the age group or even perhaps because the ideas it advances are manifestly inimical to the public welfare. yeah because moms and dads don't like that. that's a different. that's a different animal. um candice on a college campus can a safe space and a free speech zone beat the same location. well, i have different objectives. so i would say no. but a free speech zone is itself problematic because it suggests that there's only one part of the campus exactly from it's the same as me. where's this free? speech zone supposed to be. yeah. well, i mean typically it's in the quad somewhere. some states are actually force. i'm talking i'm talking it seems to be the first amendment is the first amendment of free speech zone should be just about everywhere. oh absolutely everywhere, but for time place manner restrictions or insightful here. and and tell me about these by i remember we had some we had some hearings a few years ago. we had we had been shapiro and adam kroll and other people come in. we had college professors come in. tell me about these biased response teams. i remember that that from a few years back. i think they're one of the most insidious things that are happening on college campuses. there are hundreds of them out there. basically, they look different on every campus. they often include police officers. they often include student life administrators. basically, what happens is you create some kind of portal and students are encouraged to anonymously make complaints about things that are set or done and this trigger is some kind of an investigation. sometimes the bias response team can refer for punishment or even enact punishment, but the design of the process, is that it be reputation and reputation damaging and ownerous so that any reasonable directively reasonable student would want to avoid this. how do you avoid it? will you avoid it by saying anything that anyone could take offense at and that's the problem and that's the point you don't want someone to report you to the bias response team you just you just chills. everyone's speech on campus. you can't even ben shapiro on your dorm here exactly one of the things that i'm concerned about. is this this term misinformation misinformation gets used it seems to me someone is however someone defines misinformation if you engage in misinformation, then then that speech is not allowed to happen and i'm very concerned about that because i actually think that one of the biggest purveyors of miss and maybe the biggest purveyor misinformation is the government government tells us things all the time that aren't accurate. but somehow but somehow if a citizen says something then they're going to get attacked by. i think often by the left for spreading misinformation. yeah, i mean the very concept of misinformation the idea that we should be banning it actually flies in the face of the idea of an intellectual marketplace where if you have dialogue between different ideas the ones that are true are going to rise to the top and the ones that are simply false will rise to the bottom. so for example, we didn't do a whole lot of scientific discussion of masks and how effective masks were right. we just heard our public health authorities. tell us well that they don't help and then that they do help and that they don't help unless they're in 95, right and the problem with that is it reduces our confidence in government and our public health officials. that's a huge problem very much. i wish they would have just said we're not really sure that's not the only example there's all kinds of examples of the government told us one thing that turn out to be just the opposite and yet if you if you question that you were labeled as the one spreading misinformation and your speech got got attack, so we got to be very careful of what that that's phenomen as we move forward with that idea back and that is we've come to the end of our of our representative questioners miss. did you have any final thoughts you wanted to conclude with? thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank our witnesses once again for their time today and in hearing our witnesses this afternoon and this morning i think the idea of censorship is a far more important issue than the issue of state superintendents of education state boards of education local county boards of education and parents doing what is legally and rightfully there's determine is is how their kids are educated in their communities. so when you look at this issue and you look at some of the censorship that's happening in college campuses as we heard today from dr. pedushny. i said, it's very difficult to say your name, but thank you for being here today, but that kind of censorship censorship on social media. that is far more dangerous than what we're hearing. i think from our witnesses today, and i've experienced it myself. you know, i part of the american experiment is being able to have a debate of ideas to have this exchange of ideas and not get attacked for it, but we're conservatives and some on the far left and far right being attacked every single day in this country and these these the censorship in this erasure is not being applied. equally, i know that kremlin is tweeting on twitter right now, you know, we're banning conservatives from twitter and yet the kremlin can still tweet today and you know, if you're gonna have a standard apply it equally across all users on social media and complaining that parents go to school boards to have their voices heard is wrong accusing schools and saying that there's no saves place to go read in the classroom or the library that should be this safest place to read and so this is i think not accurate representation of what's truly going on, but at the same time we want to have folks like ruby bridges having her voices heard, there are so many black voices so many lgbtq voices too that have the right to be heard the same time. but the question of speech and looking at that from that perspective even bernie sanders, we've got i read a story earlier today from daniel moran's on huffington post who's sitting in the room today quoted bernie sanders not too long ago that people have a right to give their two cents worth. give a speech without fear of violence intimidation. etc and yet today we have that going on. we had the end of a 2020 election where mainstream media wouldn't talk about the business that hunter biden was doing when talk about the emails that ron is laptop and wouldn't talk about some of the i would say allegedly shady work that he was doing and whether or not his his father was a part of that and doing that the tail end of an election and so we see that every day there were some citation earlier about kids not feeling safe because of their lgbtq status mental health mental issues are up depression and anxiety has been up by 25% over the last years because of covid-19. that is a statistic from the world health organization. i've seen it in my own family with my own children who have suffered because they were not in school. they were in virtual school and i've seen some children that haven't been able to get it back. i've seen increased in drug use from kids who are who don't even have the ability to drive right now. and so when we're having these conversations about anxiety and depression of our students, i hope that we can have a broader discussion of how keeping our kids out of schools has actually harmed them over the last two years and i just want to lastly say it again mr. rask and even though we sometimes disagree we always agree to disagree and i love the debate that we have and the civil rights subcommittee on oversight and i want to thank you all for your time and being here today. thank you. thank you for that back. thank you so much for that excellent conclusion and for making sure you'd be here with us today to participate in this and i've got a few closing thoughts of my own first. i want to thank our extraordinary witnesses beginning with the students who are with us the first panel. i want to thank samantha hall who's a librarian from the great lancaster county in pennsylvania, mindy freeman as a parent from bucks county, pa, and we thank you so much for being with us along with your daughter and dr. jonathan lucny who's with the american council of trustees and alumni and jessica berg who's a teacher in loudoun county, virginia? i also was very moved by the testimony and the seriousness with which all of you have approached a really important topic and i just had a few cleanup thoughts. i wanted to advance before we close one is on the question of of the the fine old lost art of american heckling i got heckled yesterday by our colleague marjorie taylor green on the floor of the house, and it was totally fine with me. i think they were about to gavel her down or tell her she had to be removed it was you know, she was yelling at me, but but she left some oxygen in space for me to respond. and i did and that kind of heckling, you know, if you go back and read the lincoln douglas debates. there's a great a great compendium of the lincoln douglas debates by an historian named harold holzer, but he includes the heckling that took place and people yell things out and then lincoln and douglas would respond to them and sometimes it would launch a whole new, you know discussion between the two of them. that kind of actling is fine for me the kind that i think we saw in one of the tapes where people are actually trying to shut people up and shut down the event that's strikes me is not within this spirit of the first amendment much less something like we saw on january 6th, which was the ultimate act. of of the ultimate active censorship the ultimate expression of cancel culture was what took place on january 6th where 900 people entered this building unlawfully evading the metal detectors evading the officers actually wounding an injuring a hundred and 160 of our officers smashing them in the face with baseball bats and american flags and confederate battle flags, and so on that to me was the essence of cancel culture. they were trying to cancel out our whole democracy on that day. they were trying to cancel out the whole constitution, so i was not happy to see the relatively trivial violence before on the video at all. i don't think anybody was, you know wounded or given post traumatic stress syndrome or killed in that kind of violence, but i wasn't happy to see it and i'm not happy to see of heckling which is really just shutting down other people's ability to speak the second thing. i want to say and we were about to get through the hearing so well on a great bipartisan commitment to the first amendment, but i did want to spend a respond to my friend jim jordan. i don't know if he's still out there somewhere. i'm sorry that he left the room but the you know, it's very easy to feel that your group. is somehow being unfairly targeted and made a victim and i spoke in before to the distinguished gentleman from ohio about this he seems to believe that conservatives are somehow uniquely the victims of what he calls cancel culture. we've already heard from some people today students teacher librarian mom about the actual attempts to strip books from people's libraries and we heard from the great ruby bridges about the extraordinary and shocking effort censor her books. and remove them from public libraries in an attempt to silence the critical experience the formative experience for our lives of the civil rights movement affecting everybody. not just the african-american community. not just the latino community the asian american community, but the people in the white community people all across the board. this is the american story. and so i guess what i'd like to say is i think that we're going to advance the first amendment values that all of us hold dear if we can step a little bit beyond our own sense of grievance and indignation that somehow we are the first people ever to feel the sting of being marginalized. i know that conservatives feel marginalized i think oberlin is sometimes mentioned as a school just like conservatives feel more liberals feel marginalized sometimes at george mason university or conservatives can feel marginalized that wesleyan perhaps and liberals can feel marginalized the university of chicago. okay, so let's try to maintain a sense of balance about that and we can talk about how to improve the climate for everybody. i think it's within the spirit of first amendment values that we want to give everybody the right to speak in a participate and to try to respect them as much as possible is mrs. berg said and finally as to the point raised by my friend, miss? and i think a couple of the other members raised this too. we do have a kind of attention or a balance in our public schools. and by the way, our public universities do between individual freedom and democracy. there is no doubt that we have democratic mechanisms like school boards and state legislatures and county education superintendents who are involved in the preparation of curriculum. that is a function of democracy and at the same time under our first amendment the supreme court has said and certainly the people feel our students. our teachers don't shed their first amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate and so we have to try to reconcile those two values all i would say about the current attempt to demonize and vilify people on school boards. teachers librarians is they are the democratic culture along with our ptas and our parents. they are the people that have been put in. by the voters all across america. they're doing a hell of a job. i think. and so just because someone decides that they want to go on a book banning rampage or expedition doesn't mean suddenly that everybody who's been elected to the school boards or everybody who's in office or everybody who's head of the pta is somehow the enemy of the people. i just i don't accept that. i think that the teachers the librarians the pta people the school officials are doing their very best to reconcile all of these values in a democratic society and the first amendment is there to protect all of us and the supreme court i think has been real clear about viewpoint discrimination whether at the higher education level check out board of directors versus university of virginia. i think it's called in the rosenberger case where no you can't discriminate against religious student groups that want to get money to publish their newspaper. they've got an equal right to the republicans and the democrats and the liberals and the conservatives just because just group that's publishing a newspaper doesn't mean you can be discriminated against but the supreme court's also been equally clear in the k through 12 context while curricular materials have to be age-appropriate. you can't take books out of the library because somebody else doesn't like it and i'll just end with that image i started with the first amendment freedom of speech. it's like an apple. and everybody just wants to take one bite out of the apple and if we let everybody take one bite of the apple, there's nothing left to it. so we've got to defend not just the speech. we love and the speech we agree with but also the speech that might force us to learn something new or the speech that we think we really detest and we despise that's what the first amendment is about. i want to thank the great ruby bridges for gracing us today. it means so much to us to have had you with us and this home is friedman mr. paul. let'sny forgive me and miss berg all the students everybody participating. thank you for this important investment in american freedom and the meetings now adjourned witnesses will have five days to get us any changes to their testimony and members will have five days within which to submit additional written questions for the witnesses to the chair and we'll send them to you if people are further questions and respond to them as quickly as you can and with that the meeting is adjourned. the full hearing on book censorship in schools is available online at c-span.org.

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