SRRT (Social Responsibilities Round Table)

I should, in old age, avoid reading articles about libraries by people who are not librarians, still less by those with a political agenda who are ignorant of library history or of arguments about "politicization" and "neutrality" that have raged within my profession for decades.  Stanley Kurtz (The battle for the soul of the of the library, New York Times, February 27th 2022, page SR7) refers to the "sins of woke librarians" without specifying any of those "sins."  Leaving aside that "woke" (like its predecessor "political correctness") is now an exclusively right-wing insult about those of different views, I assume those "sins" are trying to ensure that library collections contain fair representation of works by and about the underprivileged and disadvantaged.  What is the problem? Also, the idea he advances (based on an "analysis" he does not detail) that librarians became radicalized in 2008 is fatuous.  Were the brave US librarians who sought to desegregate libraries in the 1950s and 1960s in the face of opposition within (to our shame) and without librarianship radicalized?  The worst thing about Kurtz's piece is that the real threat in the current rise of book banning and censorship by the Trumpist right is an actual threat to free expression and the values of librarianship that is far more sinister that anything Kurtz's imaginary "woke librarians" could do.

Michael Gorman

(Past president, American Library Association and University Librarian Emeritus, CSU, Fresno)