The Peril of Book Bans and the Future of Higher Education

It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people. Heinrich Heine

The Rise of Book Censorship in the United States

Across the United States, a troubling resurgence of book banning has emerged in schools and libraries. Thousands of titles have been challenged or removed, often works that explore race, gender, sexuality, history, or social justice, or those authored by writers from marginalised communities. These actions are frequently justified as efforts to protect children from “controversial” content. However, this wave of censorship is not confined to primary and secondary education; it poses a serious threat to universities and higher learning. Once society accepts that certain ideas are too dangerous to read, the very principles of intellectual freedom and academic inquiry are compromised.

Universities exist to nurture curiosity, critical thinking, and independent thought. They are meant to be spaces where students engage with challenging ideas, debate differing perspectives, and confront moral, philosophical, and social complexities. Banning books, even indirectly, signals that some knowledge is off-limits, and that certain questions are forbidden. In such an environment, faculty may self-censor, curricula narrow, and libraries shrink, all of which erode the quality of higher education.

Imagination and Moral Growth: Lessons from Ruskin and McMillan

John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic and social thinker, wrote extensively about the role of literature, art, and education in shaping the moral imagination. In Sesame and Lilies (1865), Ruskin emphasised that education should cultivate the capacity to perceive beauty and truth, not merely train for vocational competence. He warned against the philistine impulse to seek comfort and convenience over depth and reflection, arguing that moral and aesthetic development requires engagement with complexity and difficulty.

Margaret McMillan (1860–1931), often associated with early childhood education reform, also emphasised the role of imagination in learning. Writing in the 19th century, McMillan argued that education should nurture the mind’s capacity to imagine, to explore, and to connect ideas across contexts. She believed that cultivating imagination was essential not only for personal development but also for creating informed, empathetic citizens capable of engaging with the social and moral challenges of their time. Restricting access to challenging texts, therefore, undermines the very purpose of education: to broaden horizons, stimulate curiosity, and develop critical faculties.

Books, in this sense, are tools of both moral and intellectual formation. Removing them from circulation is not protection but impoverishment. Students who are denied exposure to diverse perspectives are prevented from developing empathy, critical judgement, and the capacity to engage meaningfully with difference.

The Postman Perspective: Censorship and Cultural Decay

Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), provided a prescient critique of how culture and media shape public thought. He contrasted George Orwell’s fear of censorship with Aldous Huxley’s fear that people would willingly surrender the habit of reading. Postman observed that societies that lose the practice of deep reading become susceptible to triviality, distraction, and passive conformity.

Book banning accelerates the very decay Postman warned against. Even if texts remain physically present, the cultural message is clear: some ideas are dangerous, some knowledge unwelcome. Students, and eventually the wider public, internalise caution, avoiding difficult questions rather than confronting them. The result is a society less capable of critical thought, less willing to engage with moral ambiguity, and more prone to ideological manipulation.

In higher education, this has tangible consequences. Faculty avoid controversial texts, syllabi shrink to avoid scrutiny, and libraries are pressured to remove works that challenge prevailing norms. The effect is the erosion of academic freedom, curricular diversity, and intellectual courage, qualities essential to both scholarship and democracy.

The Consequences for Universities

Book bans have immediate and long-term effects on higher education. Courses that once encouraged debate, exploration, and engagement with difficult subjects are quietly narrowed. Research in fields such as literature, history, sociology, and philosophy is compromised when students and scholars cannot access key texts. Campus libraries, traditionally spaces of open inquiry, face political pressures that threaten their mission to preserve and provide knowledge.

Self-censorship also becomes widespread. Students may avoid sensitive topics, fearing backlash. Faculty may choose safer texts and topics to avoid controversy or administrative scrutiny. Intellectual curiosity is stifled, and the culture of rigorous debate, central to the university experience, weakens. Universities that acquiesce to censorship risk losing credibility, talent, and their role as incubators of civic responsibility.

The broader societal consequences are profound. Universities do not exist in isolation; they prepare citizens for engagement with democracy. When education becomes constrained, society’s capacity for informed discourse, empathy, and critical reflection diminishes. A democracy that fears its own ideas is a democracy in decline.

Defending the Freedom to Read

Defenders of censorship argue that some material is inappropriate, harmful, or offensive. But education is not about shielding students from discomfort; it is about developing the capacity to navigate complexity. Contextualised teaching, discussion, and guidance are far more effective than prohibition.

The principle of academic freedom must remain paramount. Universities are governed not by transient political pressures or popular opinion but by standards of scholarship, pedagogy, and intellectual integrity. Accepting external control over the materials taught undermines the credibility and purpose of higher education.

Book banning is not merely a debate about literature. It is a battle over imagination, morality, and the very practice of critical thought. Ruskin reminds us that education must cultivate the moral and aesthetic imagination; McMillan insists that it must stimulate creativity and empathy; Postman warns that the failure to engage seriously with knowledge is a cultural danger as great as overt censorship. Together, they offer a powerful argument: to ban books is to constrict the human spirit.

Universities must remain sanctuaries of free thought, spaces where ideas however controversial or uncomfortable, can be explored rigorously. Protecting the freedom to read is inseparable from protecting the freedom to think. In defending this freedom, higher education safeguards not only knowledge but the imagination, empathy, and critical faculties that sustain society itself.

References

• Ruskin, John. Sesame and Lilies. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1865.
• McMillan, Margaret. The Training of the Imagination in Education. London: Methuen, 1897.
• Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. London: Methuen, 1986.
• Milton, John. Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. London, 1644.
• PEN America. Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools, 2025.
• Bookshop.org. Banned and Challenged Books List, 2025.