(NEW YORK)— PEN America today warned about “serious threats” to free expression in public schools and colleges nationwide outlined in a conservative think tank’s policy blueprint for the next conservative White House. This latest assault on the freedom to learn and read would subject millions more students to the alarming censorship— including book bans and restrictions on classroom discussion about race, LGBTQ+ rights and other topics— that PEN America has documented over the last four years as it has spread across 33 states.
In a 2,500-word white paper, Project 2025— A Threat to the Freedoms to Read, Learn, and Teach, PEN America warned that Project 2025 policy prescriptions issued by the Heritage Foundation and other groups threaten to accelerate nation-wide the draconian book bans and erasure of classroom topics that have already impacted hundreds of school districts, undermined the freedoms to read, learn, and teach and chilled academic and intellectual freedom.
“If adopted, Project 2025 would ramp up book banning, impose a greater climate of censorship and self-censorship on schools and college campuses, and silence educators and students–all on a national level,” the analysis concluded. (This is the first of a two-part series by PEN America analyzing Project 2025; the second part in the coming weeks will cover threats to press freedom and media regulation, as well as broader censorship concerns).
These proposals represent more evidence of an aggressive educational censorship movement that PEN America has been closely tracking in school districts and state legislatures across the country. Later this month, PEN America will issue its annual analysis of book bans in public schools, documenting more than 10,000 instances of book bans during the 2023-2024 school year nationwide; earlier it had reported 4,000 instances of bans in the first half of the last school year. Then next month, the organization will update its report series “America’s Censored Classrooms” tracking the newest tactics that censorship-minded legislators and activists are using to impose ideologically-driven restrictions on what educators can teach, and on what students can learn.
James Tager, research director at PEN America and author of the white paper, said: “The architects of Project 2025 have aligned themselves with a crusade aimed at the ideological takeover of our educational system, at the expense of intellectual and academic freedom. This agenda aims to turbocharge those who support book bans, people who target and harass librarians, and legislators who have ruled certain ideas and stories off limits in schools. This is a blueprint to legitimize censorship and a threat to the freedoms to read, learn, teach, and think.”
PEN America outlined these four key threats to the freedoms to read, learn, and teach in Project 2025:
- Wielding culture war politics to silence teachers, ban books, and chill honest classroom conversations around difficult subjects like race, sexuality, and gender in lessons on history, literature and other topics. The proposals represent a doubling down on what is known as the “Ed Scare”–the effort to advance educational censorship and foment animosity toward public education.
- Using the rhetoric of “parental rights” to legitimize school-wide restrictions on LGBTQ+ content. The document calls on the next White House to pass a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights, and ensure that any education-related regulations contain similar “parental rights” protections. It also calls on Congress to give parents a “private right of action” against schools to allow them to sue schools over curricular content that offends them. Last year, PEN America’s report Educational Intimidation: How “Parents’ Rights” Legislation Undermines the Freedom to Learn, said these “parental rights” proposals largely have an ulterior motive: to empower a vocal and censorship-minded minority with greater opportunity to scrutinize public education and intimidate educators with threats of punishment.
- Equating LGBTQ+ content in children’s books and in school curricula with pornography, and criminalizing making such content accessible to students. PEN America has repeatedly warned that this type of rhetoric directly promotes discriminatory book bans, many of which target books with LGBTQ+ characters or that tell LGBTQ+ stories. It also poses a direct threat to teachers and librarians who could face criminal prosecution.
- Removing guardrails against the ideological takeover of state universities. Project 2025 proposes substantial changes that would undermine the longstanding accreditation process that helps ensure the independence of public colleges and universities. Project 2025 would also limit the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) ability to push state colleges to conform with federal civil rights law. These proposals would neuter two of the primary bulwarks against state politicians’ ideological control of higher education.
The Heritage Foundation’s 922-page set of policy proposals in Project 2025 covers all aspects of federal governance with the goal of quick implementation by “the next conservative administration to govern.” In public comments Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the document, while news organizations have reported that many former Trump White House staff were involved in the project, though it was developed primarily by Heritage Foundation staff. According to the Heritage Foundation, more than 100 other conservative think tanks have endorsed Project 2025.
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.