Jeremy C. Young

Program Director, Freedom to Learn

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

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)


Articles by Jeremy C. Young

Educational CensorshipU.S. Free Expression
Wednesday October 9

PEN America Endorses the Magna Charta Universitatum 2020

The MCU emphasizes the importance of university autonomy from direct political control, a crucial requirement for free expression in a democratic society.

Monday June 24

Jawboning: When Educational Censors Don’t Bother Passing a Law

Censorship advocates have increasingly responded to growing resistance with a new tactic: trying to achieve the same results without passing a law at all.

Writing as Craft
Tuesday April 16

Lisa Grunwald | The PEN Ten Interview

Credibility is essential when you’re writing historical fiction, or really when you’re writing anything. How I did it was largely by keeping myself from trying too hard.