Confronting Book Bans: A Panel Discussion

Emily Drabinski, Emily Knox, Torsten Reimer

Two national leaders in the battle against book bans, Emily Drabinski, ALA past president, and Associate Professor Emily Knox will share their insights on recent trends in book banning, including what is driving book banning today. They join Torsten Reimer, university librarian and dean of the University of Chicago Library, in an online panel discussion hosted by the University of Chicago Library.

Drabinski is associate professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She publishes and presents widely on topics related to knowledge organization, information literacy, and critical perspectives in librarianship. Drabinski edits Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies, a book series from Library Juice Press/Litwin Books. She is a contributing writer at Truthout.

Knox's most recent book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom, won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the areas of intellectual freedom. Her articles have been published in the Library Quarterly, Library and Information Science Research, and Open Information Science. Knox serves on the board of National Coalition Against Censorship and is the editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.

This event is sponsored by the UChicago Library; UChicago Divinity School; and the UChicago Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture; and the iSchool at Illinois