Slate
America’s biggest publisher just hired a lobbyist to fight book banning. She’s got a plan.
While it’s not unusual for other industries to dedicate staff to influencing or changing public policy, it’s virtually unheard of in the relatively sleepy world of book publishing. Rosalie Stewart, however, has just been hired as Penguin Random House’s senior public policy manager, a new position that will fight the recent explosion in book-banning campaigns at schools and public libraries. At present, for example, officials in Texas and Iowa have attempted to argue that the book collections held by schools and libraries constitute “government speech” and are therefore not protected by the First Amendment. This bid to redefine the nature of public libraries was rejected by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Iowa, but for Texas, the matter is being weighed by the notorious extremists on the “rogue” 5th Circuit. I spoke with Stewart recently about the battle before her. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Laura Miller: Tell me a little bit about your new job and what in your background made you want to take it on.
Rosalie Stewart: A lot of what I’m going to be doing is advancing freedom-to-read legislation at the state level. We’ve seen some states—Maryland, Illinois—advance legislation that protects the right to read, the right to learn, and the right to be read.
In terms of my background, I grew up in Texas in a very conservative evangelical family. I’ve worked on a lot of campaigns, local and state, there. I co-founded a group called MOVE Texas, which does youth activism and voter registration. When I got my master’s in public policy, I went to work at the American Library Association, and that’s when I really got to see the full picture of how this particular issue is playing out.
You’ve just come back from a Banned Books Week tour. How did that go?
On my first day of work, I flew out to Milwaukee. At the public library we handed out books that have been banned for various reasons, including The Diary of Anne Frank and Hair Love, among others. They had school groups coming in—elementary school kids, high school kids, all different levels. We were out there on a rainy day, handing out books, and I think we donated 3,700 books that day.
There have been two book-banning reports recently from the ALA and PEN America. The first said that book challenges are slowing down, and the second said that banning attempts have ramped up. Could you explain why there would be that difference?
My colleagues—my former colleagues, I should say—at ALA are very good at what they do, and they’re very smart. As a professional association, they just have a different focus in terms of what they’re counting. They’re focused on a very specific definition of a “book ban.” They only count book removals. But we know that this censorship is playing itself out in different ways. Not only are books being challenged, removed, and then put back on the shelf, but there is soft censorship. There’s a chilling effect in terms of the books that people are buying and teaching. I think that PEN America’s definition is a little more expansive and draws on a wider variety of sources. Censorship is not going down. Book banning is not fading away. That’s not what we’re hearing from people out there. That’s a major challenge: How do we fight back against this on such a diffuse battlefield? It’s happening at the state legislatures; it’s happening at the school boards; and it’s happening at the agency level.
Read the full interview
https://slate.com/culture/2024/10/book-banning-publishers-fight-back-rosalie-stewart.html
