Jeremy C. Young is the Freedom to Learn program director at PEN America. In this role, he leads PEN America’s efforts to fight government censorship in educational institutions, with a particular focus on the higher education sector. He directs PEN America’s work on educational gag orders, the Champions of Higher Education initiative, and an expanding network of coalitions to mobilize support for professors and teachers.
Before coming to PEN America, Young served as the communications and marketing manager at the American Historical Association (AHA), the world’s largest professional association of historians, and directed the AHA’s Freedom to Learn Initiative combating legislative censorship in history classrooms. Previously, he was an assistant professor of history and director of the Institute of Politics and Public Affairs at Utah Tech University.
Young holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Indiana University and is the author of The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He was a 2021 New Leaders Council Fellow and a recipient of the Roger D. Bridges Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He serves on the board of directors of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nonprofit that advocates for increased oversight of homeschooling.
Publications
It’s Time for Public College Presidents to Stand Up to Educational Censorship
Newsweek, November 2024
Farewell to the Cultural Center?
Inside Higher Ed, August 2024
Diversity and Free Expression in Higher Education
Metropolitan Universities, July 2024
Kim Reynolds must veto the nation’s most extreme ban on DEI and expression
Des Moines Register, May 2024
Virginia just revealed the truth behind government attacks on DEI
Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 2024
Why Americans must speak up to defend university autonomy
University World News, March 2024
Higher education needs to reform itself. It also needs to defend itself.
The Hill, January 2024
Public Higher Ed and the Real Value of Arts and Humanities
Governing, January 2024
Florida is about to seriously damage its universities. Speak up before it’s too late
Miami Herald, January 2024
Legislative censors change, broaden their approach
Inside Higher Ed, January 2024
Dangerous Ohio bill will breed self-censorship and fear, not intellectual freedom
Columbus Dispatch, December 2023,
Campuses for All: How Free Speech Education Can Protect and Enrich Colleges and Universities
Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, November 2023,
The Newest Under-the-Radar Attack on Academic Freedom
The Daily Beast, October 2023
Christopher Rufo’s Alarming Crusade Against Universities
TIME Magazine, August 2023
Educational Gag Orders
AAC&U Liberal Education Magazine, June 2023
Ron DeSantis and the New Campus Free Speech Crisis
The Daily Beast, February 2023
Bills censoring K-12 teaching affect higher ed too
Inside Higher Ed, January 2023
Florida’s Ban on an AP African American Studies Class Is Authoritarian
The Daily Beast, January 2023
Watching What You Say
Talking Stick, November/December 2022
Utah audit report targets schools and censors teachers
Salt Lake Tribune, November 2022,
Today’s book bans echo a panic against comic books in the 1950s
Washington Post (Made by History series), October 2022
Oklahoma national leader in banning books, hampering free speech in schools
Tulsa World, September 2022
A Lot More Censorship Is Coming to a School Near You
The Daily Beast, September 2022
Critics of Larry Arnn should oppose laws censoring Tennessee educators
The Tennessean, August 2022
Education gag orders hit Iowa schools
The Gazette, July 2022
Educational gag orders could destroy the structure of higher education
Times Higher Education, April 2022
It’s Black History Month. Let’s talk about it.
New York Daily News, February 2022
PEN America Reports
America’s Censored Classrooms 2023 (November 2023)
America’s Censored Classrooms (August 2023)