A panel of professors hosted an open forum on Wednesday for more than 100 students and faculty to debate book banning in schools.
At Meeting of the Minds, the audience of students and faculty discussed various aspects of the issue of book banning, such as censorship, child development and whether it’s appropriate for kids to learn about sex, while the panel of six professors analyzed the topic through the lens of their various fields, like law, sociology and library studies.
“It was wonderful civil discourse,” English professor Suzanne Spoor, who co-hosted the event, said. “People were very brave and told their truth from their point of view, and were very respectful of other people.”
According to English professor and panelist Steve Canaday, the definition of book banning is “[when] choices made by experts who have training are overridden by school boards or administrators or teachers or politicians on the basis of a book’s content.”
Canaday added that “overwhelmingly, book banners target stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.” Other frequently banned topics include books about women’s rights, death, violence, sexual assault and religious minorities.
Spoor and Human Services Department Chair Nicole Williams, another co-host, created Meeting of the Minds several years before the pandemic but put it on hold until this semester.
Spoor said she plans to hold one every semester from now on.
Third-year business student Mya Williams, who attended the event, said it’s “important to have these discussions because it can bring awareness to what’s happening currently.”
Williams, the Student Government Association vice president of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, said banning books “takes away our individual freedoms.”
“It takes away freedom of speech and it also takes away and erases different perspectives, identities and races,” Williams said. “There are so many people that want to oppress people [and] the way they’re trying to go about it is by limiting the knowledge of others.”
