Schools doubled banned books in past year

The Hill - A new report shows that the number of nonfiction books banned in U.S. schools doubled in the last academic year.  PEN America’s report released Thursday called “Facts & Fiction: Stories Stripped Away by Book Bans” found that 3,743 unique titles were removed from school libraries and classrooms between July 2024 and June 2025. This included 1,102 nonfiction titles.

The topics of nonfiction books removed from libraries and classrooms included those focused on activism and social movements, which amounted to 52 percent of those books banned.

“This increase should not be a surprise, given the increased crackdown on activism and free speech by the federal government over the last year,” PEN wrote in its survey. “These themes encourage young people to question authority and societal inequities, confront injustice in their communities, and participate in social changes to address disparities in the world around them. Suppressing these themes sends a message of discouragement and the need to maintain the status quo.”

The report states that “a strain of anti-intellectualism … mirrors the broader political attack on facts and knowledge and the skepticism and devaluation of, and disdain for, experts and expertise — tactics long associated with the rise of authoritarian regimes and intended to sow distrust in democratic institutions.”