Associate Professor Emily Knox testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 12. She was one of five witnesses offering testimony for the hearing "Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature."
In her testimony, Knox addressed the right to intellectual freedom, why people attempt to ban books, and the importance of libraries. A recording of the hearing is available on the Committee's website.
Knox is the board president of the National Coalition Against Censorship and editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. She also is a member of the Mapping Information Access research team, an academic research project examining information access and availability in U.S. public schools and libraries.
Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom, censorship, information ethics, information policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. Her book, Book Banning in 21st Century America, was published by Rowman & Littlefield and is the first monograph in the Beta Phi Mu Scholars' Series. Her most recent book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom (ALA Neal-Schuman), won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom.