On Wednesday, Judd Legum, a liberal activist who runs a very large newsletter called Popular Information, reported that the school board in McMinn County, Tenn., had voted to “ban” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Maus.” The book has been hailed as a classic of literature about the Holocaust. It also contains several graphic passages. Before the end of the day, news of the ruling of a school board in a small rural county had spread like wildfire across the Internet. It even warranted a breaking news alert at The New York Times.
Unfortunately, much of the coverage of this story – and many others like it as school curricula have become a hot button political issue – has been disingenuous. I don’t take concerns about book banning lightly. In my more than two decades as a journalist, it’s not an exaggeration to say I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words arguing for a robust and expansive definition of free speech. I have publicly defended French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s right to blaspheme in the face of terror attacks, just as I have deplored cancel culture and campus speech codes.
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