Radical Librarian Censorship Collective

The attack on university freedom of debate & discussion continues unabated as one US institution hires "Safe Space Monitors" (or Thought Police in plain English) to ensure no students are exposed to any speech, book or object that may offend.

Meanwhile in the UK The Sunday Times (no link £) reports that:

Universities are considering the insertion of warnings into books and even taking some off the shelves altogether to protect students from "dangerous" and "wrong" arguments.

Just who is define "dangerous" and/or "wrong" exactly. Currently some books under threat include The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail which provided the basis for the fictional Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Books by Nigel Lawson and feminist Andrea Dworkin are also in the wrong ideas category.  No fan of the latter two but banning their writings?

Of course there are books that disturb and lie. David Irving is mentioned. Complete nazi shite but any intelligent student should be able to be exposed to his nonsense and realise the man is a fraud. No mention of banning Mein Kampf or the Koran both of which promote very dangerous and deadly ideas, the latter calling for death to apostates, homosexuals and seeks the subjugation of women under men. Oh and justifies slavery amongst other things.

For the record I don't think either of these tomes should be banned. Ideas just go underground and fester in an environment whereby they gain traction through martyrdom.

There is a group behind this censorship who laughingly call themselves the Radical Librarian Collective a self appointed group of censorious morons who don't believe libraries are neutral but:

....maintains the status quo of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Even putting aside the fact Karl Marx spent much of his life in the British Library writing Capital and his other revolutionary texts such a proposition is nonsense. Libraries go to great lengths to be inclusive of ethnic minority literature these days as the demographic of the nation has changed. Of course public spending cuts have damaged library provision but the one's I know do their damned best to serve their local communities.

And anyway besides who went went and made these jerks our guardian angels? This was the basis for a "radical chat" in April:

1. What kind of diversity initiatives do you have at your library? Are they effective? How can you tell?
2. In what ways do you see whiteness at work in your library?
3. Do you perform whiteness at work? Do you expect others to? How?
4. What can we do to dismantle whiteness in our profession?
4.5. What role can white people play in helping to dismantle whiteness?
5. How can we mentor/help others to navigate the whiteness in our profession?

Sounds a bit racist to me....

All I see is yet another offensive by intolerant activists to tell us what we can and cannot read.

Say No to Censorship.