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Freedom to Read
"Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours."
A policy statement from ALA and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee
["The Freedom to Read statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of
the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970
consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association
of American Publishers. Adopted June 25, 1953; revised January 28, 1972, January 16, 1991, July 12, 2000, June
30, 2004, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee. It is a Joint Statement by:
American Library Association
Association of American Publishers
and subsequently endorsed by:
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
The Association of American University Presses, Inc.
Freedom
to Read Foundation
National Association of College Stores
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Council of Teachers of English
The Thomas Jefferson Center for the
Protection of Free Expression"]
The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is
continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the
country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in
schools, to label "controversial" views, to distribute lists of
"objectionable" books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions
apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer
valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national
security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We,
as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for
disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom
to read.
Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the
fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical
judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize
propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and
believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press
in order to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for them. We
believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.
These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern
of pressures being brought against education, the press, art and images, films, broadcast
media, and the Internet. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of
fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of
expression by those who seek to avoid controversy or unwelcome scrutiny by government
officials.
Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time
of accelerated change. And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of
social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain.
Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by
choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the
toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with
controversy and difference.
Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest
freedoms. The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making generally
available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience.
The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which
come the original contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended
discussion that serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas
into organized collections.
We believe that free communication is essential to the
preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures
toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and
expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American
community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to
preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a
profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for
the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings.
The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those
with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential
rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.
We therefore affirm these propositions:
- It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest
diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or
considered dangerous by the majority.
Creative thought is by definition new, and what
is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined
and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless
suppression of any concept that challenges the established orthodoxy. The power of a
democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom of its citizens
to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every
nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the democratic process. Furthermore,
only through the constant activity of weighing and selecting can the democratic mind
attain the strength demanded by times like these. We need to know not only what we believe
but why we believe it.
- Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or
presentation they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to
establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining
what should be published or circulated.
Publishers and librarians serve the educational
process by helping to make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the
mind and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the
patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and consider a
broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or
government or church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what
another thinks proper.
- It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to
writings on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.
No
art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private
lives of its creators. No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of
writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.
- There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine
adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of
writers to achieve artistic expression.
To some, much of modern expression is shocking.
But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent
writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to
prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be
exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically for
themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by
preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters
values differ, and values cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised that will
suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.
- It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label
characterizing any expression or its author as subversive or dangerous.
The ideal of
labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by
authority what is good or bad for others. It presupposes that individuals must be directed
in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not need others to
do their thinking for them.
- It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people's
freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups
seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large; and by the
government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to public information.
It
is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the
moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with
those of another individual or group. In a free society individuals are free to determine
for themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will
recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law
into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other
members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the
accepted and the inoffensive. Further, democratic societies are more safe, free, and
creative when the free flow of public information is not restricted by governmental
prerogative or self-censorship.
- It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the
freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and
expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate that
the answer to a "bad" book is a good one, the answer to a "bad" idea
is a good one.
The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot
obtain matter fit for that reader's purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of
restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that
has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual
inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense
of the freedom to read requires of all publishers and librarians the utmost of their
faculties, and deserves of all Americans the fullest of their support.
We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy
generalizations. We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of the written word. We do
so because we believe that it is possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of
cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the application of these propositions may
mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that are repugnant to many
persons. We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people
read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that
ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic
society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.
["The Freedom to Read statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of
the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970
consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association
of American Publishers. Adopted June 25, 1953; revised January 28, 1972, January 16, 1991, July 12, 2000, June
30, 2004, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee. It is a Joint Statement by:
American Library Association
Association of American Publishers
and subsequently endorsed by:
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
The Association of American University Presses, Inc.
Freedom
to Read Foundation
National Association of College Stores
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Council of Teachers of English
The Thomas Jefferson Center for the
Protection of Free Expression"]
Review for all modules
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"The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is
continuously under attack... We believe that free communication is essential to the
preservation of a free society and a creative culture."
Wickliffe Public Library Story Hour
Bowerston Public Library
Reading Room, Wright Memorial Library
 Explore the Freedom to Read Foundation and the timeline of actions taken for issues
confronting the Foundation.
In Defense of America's Freedoms is an article by Tom Teepen that first appeared in American
Libraries, (December 2004, pp. 54-56). It describes the history and current activities of the Foundation.
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