Censorship affects all of us
Race. Global warming. Affordable housing. Vaccines. Female.
These are just a few of the many words the government has completely removed from record. The administration of President Donald Trump has used censorship in re-shaping American history: to exclude uncomfortable parts, remove funding from certain resources and reconsider what is being taught.
Senior William Hanna is uneasy about the rampant censorship.
“Pretending something didn’t happen doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It just makes it harder to address,” Hanna said.
Earlier this year, Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III received a letter from the Trump administration listing several exhibits across eight museums subjected to internal review. The letter was meant to replace “woke ideologies” in the museums with “unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”
“But it’s really important to know where our nation has been. …” Hanna said. “Trump … [wanted] to make the Museum of African American History more lighthearted, but that is such an important part of why our nation is the way that it is.”
Hanna added, “Even though … slavery ended 150 years ago, it still has a huge bearing on how our nation works and how communities function.”
This idea of unifying the country was President Trump’s justification for censorship. English teacher Meghan Joyce feels it’s a way of othering those who don’t agree.
“By presenting federal laws and policies as shared American values, Trump either ignores the values of his critics or presents them as un-American,” she said.
Artist Amy Sherald, whose infamous portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama has been featured in the National Portrait Gallery since 2018, has called out attempts to censor her work.
Sherald was invited to hold her new solo art show there in September. Titled “American Sublime,” it features approximately 50 portraits, including one that sparked controversy among White House officials: “Trans Forming Liberty” which features a transgender individual with parallels drawn to Lady Liberty.
Already under scrutiny from the Trump administration, museum officials discussed removing the piece, but Sherald refused. Bunch offered to replace it with a video showcasing audience reactions instead, but Sherald vetoed the idea, as she disliked the opportunity the video would give for debate about trans validity. Opposed to the idea of being censored, Sherald ultimately decided to withdraw her show, deciding that without “Trans Forming Liberty,” it was incomplete.
The political world isn’t safe from censorship either. After contradicting Trump over the success of the U.S. strike against Iran, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency Chief was fired on Aug. 22.
The former head of the Center for Disease Control and prevention was also fired after refusing to accept new vaccine policies.
The legality of many of the 50 other firings has been questionable.
Despite the censorship that has occurred since he took office, Trump passed an order on Jan. 20 that directly contradicted the acts of censorship his administration has committed by criticizing the government’s censorship of “misinformation” on platforms like social media.
Senior Rowan Moore found this statement hypocritical.
“I think what he considers misinformation isn’t what [misinformation] is,” they said.
Since Trump took office, a list of more than 350 federally banned words has continually censored government documents, websites and historical records. Using it, the Trump administration has erased all items with banned words from official documents. Little attention was paid as to how the bans were carried out, as many documents that had nothing to do with the specified words were erased on accident, because of their spelling. This lack of care for what is censored is making many Americans, like Moore, uneasy, especially as the banned words list continues to grow.
“For the most part, right now, people are kind of catching this, and it’s being reported on. But I feel like people tend to have a kind of short-term memory. They might forget about all the things he’s done, because he’s always doing so much,” Moore said.
If the public is bombarded with headlines about new forms of censorship, they likely won’t be as eager to combat the issue, and that’s where it succeeds. The alternative is staying engaged: censorship loses to the people who talk about it.
Through book bans and influencer cancellations, for some students, censorship can feel somewhat inevitable as of late. According to the Pew Research Center, which conducted a study in March 2024 on limiting offensive speech, generations have gotten progressively desensitized to it.
While censorship can feel like a distant issue, the ramifications of the choice to censor a piece of media go deeper than people may think.
Sophomore Archie Dougherty defines censorship as, “The blockage of free speech. [The government is] stopping people from consuming media, or other things that might want to be hidden, but … shouldn’t be hidden.”
Censorship exists in multiple facets of media: books, news, movies and quotes and more.
The degree to which things are censored is also varied. It could be removing or deleting content, putting economic or financial pressure on the distributor or government control of licensing and censorship. Junior Sofia Rivera is familiar with censorship. “I mostly know [censorship] in the context of cancel culture with influencers, celebrities and influential people,” she said.
Whether censorship is defined as accountability or threatening someone’s free speech is in the eye of the beholder.
Rivera said that in instances where people with a platform abuse their influence: “That is when cancel culture can be a good thing, as their whole audience riles against them. And I think that that can be positive as you are taking down their negative messages,” she said.
However, Rivera acknowledges that it can be taken too far and that the audience should be aware of their power.
While censorship can feel wrong, some believe there are situations where censorship is justified. Dougherty said “the blockage of free speech, is bad because it’s a Constitutional right. So censorship is in direct opposition to free speech.”
On the other hand, when considering whether offensive off-campus activity should be censored on campus, Dougherty felt conflicted: “People are allowed to say whatever they want, but they can’t expect not to have consequences.”
Ninth-grader Lili Itzkowitz believes that on-campus censorship can have some merit on campuses with younger students. “You don’t want others talking about something very serious around young people,” Itzkowitz said.
While free speech is important, taking care and thought with words is always integral.
For students, the form of censorship they’re most likely to interact with is book bans. According to Penguin Random House, historically, some of the most banned books are “The Great Gatsby,” “The Diary of a Young Girl,” “1984” and “Red at the Bone,” which is part of the ninth-grade English curriculum.
Dougherty brought up a book he read in middle school, “The Giver.” “[Book bans] upset me because no matter the caliber of the book, I don’t think that nobody should be allowed to read them, even if I don’t love the book,” Dougherty said.
While book bans are a popular form of censorship, classroom censorship is also a fundamental issue in student experience.
Itzkowitz said, “It really depends on what people want to talk about. If a few people don’t feel comfortable talking about something, then it doesn’t have to be talked about” Itzkowitz said.
Censorship may feel unavoidable, but there are ways to combat it.
Minnesota passed legislation two years ago prohibiting book bans, making it possible for communities to hold schools accountable; St. Francis school district in Minnesota had a lawsuit filed against them for banning books after a single complaint and choosing which books to ban based on an untrustworthy website.
Another way students can combat this is by reading challenged and banned books. Many libraries and bookstores have a banned books table.
Other ways to combat censorship include voting in local elections for school and library boards, reporting incidents of censorship and speaking out.
