IHSI Diversity Committee Monthly Resources
Each month, the IHSI Diversity Committee shares recommended reading and resources with the rest of IHSI staff. Curating and sharing these resources gives our team an opportunity to educate ourselves on various topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.
Over the past couple of years, we have found that our team appreciates the ability to learn more about a subject they knew very little about or even may not have been aware of.
As an institute devoted to promoting all forms of health, we want to share these resources more broadly with our campus and community stakeholders. We hope that you will find them as useful as we have.
Access to information and book bans
This month, Bridget Melton, IHSI’s Director of Strategic Planning & Communications, shares resources on access to information and book bans.
There’s a lot of talk in our society right now about information – information overload, misinformation, disinformation, etc. This month, I’m sharing resources related to access to information, specifically in the form of book bans.
To this point, I had heard and seen book bans mentioned a lot in major media, but I had never given the topic much thought or attention. But, as I read through and reflected on various resources, I started to see book bans as a very concrete example of how withholding or limiting access to information and education is a very powerful form of oppression.
“It’s because we learn by being exposed to knowledge and information that we become who we are. So any barriers to that access is really people trying to say that I don’t want you to become the kind of human being that I disagree with, in some ways.”
~ Emily Knox, professor of information sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
If you have 2 minutes, meet Prof. Emily Knox. She has written several books on the topic and has been cited as an expert in many major media outlets. She also testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on book bans in 2023.
If you have 3 minutes, get data highlights about book bans from NPR, NBC and/or the Guardian. Reports are put out by both PEN America and the ALA each year, and differ in how they define book bans. Each media outlet highlights slightly different aspects and links to either or both reports.
If you have another 3 minutes, NBC also notes that there is a “soft-censorship” aspect of books bans that goes unreported.
If you have 5 minutes, read an Inside Higher Ed article about how K-12 book bans affect higher education and our larger society, not just students in those grades.
If you have 50 minutes, check out a webinar recording with Emily Knox hosted by the F&S Diversity and Inclusion committee.
If you want to go down a rabbit hole, check out this landing page of resources about banned books as it relates to health and wellness from the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida