(NEW YORK)— PEN America has condemned New College of Florida’s destruction of a student-run library of books on gender, part of the College’s abrupt closure of the student-led gender and diversity center on Thursday.

 Video posted by Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter Steven Walker shows the books, donated over decades by students, faculty, and community members, being discarded in a series of large boxes adjacent to a dumpster, which was itself filled with other books culled from the university library’s collection. Community members scrambled to save the discarded books from the dumpster.

“News of the closure of the gender and diversity center at New College, and books being ripped from the shelves,carted off in a dumpster is more than alarming; it is frightening,” said Jeremy C. Young, Freedom to Learn program director at PEN America. “The targeting of a gender and diversity center, and the College’s own explanation, suggests this was an ideologically motivated effort to silence viewpoints and remove resources and information on gender on the New College campus. Regardless of the motives, it’s hard to imagine a more accurate and dystopian embodiment of the DeSantis reign than a book titled Feminist Thought thrown to the ground on a Florida campus.”

Young said: “In the context of the ideological takeover of New College and the effort to close its gender studies program for blatantly ideological reasons, this is an escalation of the attack on the intellectual, sexual, and racial diversity of its student body. And the echo of past attacks on literature representing the voices of people of color and LGBTQ+ people from the annals of history is inescapable.”

About PEN America

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected], (201) 247-5057