4 The Freedom to Read

The text of The Freedom to Read is published in the Intellectual Freedom Manual, ninth edition (2015), part I, chapter 2, and on the ALA website.

The Freedom to Read, the best known of the American Library Association’s documents supporting the principles of intellectual freedom as embodied in the Library Bill of Rights, had its beginnings during the Intellectual Freedom Committee’s 1953 Midwinter Meeting in Chicago.1 At that meeting, Chair William S. Dix suggested the committee “discuss the current wave of censorship and attacks on books and libraries” and “help clarify the stand which libraries might take and point to ways in which our own position might be strengthened in the minds of the public.” The committee directed Dix to consider a small, off-the-record conference with in-depth discussion of the matter.

Dix’s efforts resulted in a conference on the freedom to read, sponsored jointly by the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council (ABPC), held at the Westchester Country Club, in Rye, New York, on May 2–3, 1953. The object of the meeting was to bring together nationally known figures representing librarians, publishers, and the public interest. Spokespeople for the public interest, viewed as vitally important to the success of the conference, included representatives of business, foundations, law, and education. Luther Evans, former librarian of Congress and head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, served as chair of the conference.

In their invitation to potential participants, the joint sponsors said:

Recent months have seen the emergence in our country of a pattern of pressures whose effect must be to limit the range and variety of expression. This pattern has affected in one way or another all the media of communications and indeed the entire area of free inquiry. Books are the last of the communications media to be affected by these pressures toward conformity. They remain preeminently the medium for the free expression of facts, ideas, and human experience in all its varieties. Librarians and publishers feel a deep responsibility for doing their part to see that this continues to be so, and they share with thoughtful men in every profession a conviction that freedom of communication is indispensable to a creative culture and a free society.

The objectives of the conference were:

1. To define the rights and responsibilities of publishers and librarians in maintaining the freedom of Americans to read what they choose;

2. To assay recent developments tending to restrict this freedom;

3. To consider where lines should be drawn between permissible expression and impermissible expression, and who is to draw the lines; and

4. To ascertain the public interest in this area and, if the group agrees, consider ways of asserting it.

Debate at the conference focused on the specific problem areas of obscenity and pornography and disloyalty and subversive materials. The participants considered a number of questions: What is the function of publishers and librarians in circulating ideas? Should they be responsible guides or simply caterers to public taste? Do they have a special responsibility to make available nonconforming expression and unpopular views? Do citizens have a right to read everything not expressly prohibited by law? Should a book be judged only by its content, and should the political and personal background of the author be ignored? Is the role of the public library entirely neutral? Can books be subversive?

The conference resulted in substantial agreement on principles. A Continuations Committee was appointed to draft a statement based on the proceedings and to consider action and research projects designed to publicize and explore further the matters discussed. The Continuations Committee consisted of Arthur A. Houghton Jr., president of Steuben Glass; Harold D. Lasswell, professor of law and political science at Yale Law School; Bernard Berelson, director of the Behavioral Sciences Division at the Ford Foundation; William S. Dix, librarian at Princeton University; and Dan Lacy, managing director of the American Book Publishers Council.

By the end of May the Continuations Committee, with the assistance of other individuals, produced a final version of The Freedom to Read for the approval of the Westchester conference participants. On June 18, 1953, the following statement was endorsed by the Board of Directors of the American Book Publishers Council and on June 25, 1953, by the Council of the American Library Association:

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove books from sale, to censor textbooks, to label “controversial” books, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to the use of books and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating them, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

We are deeply concerned about these attempts at suppression. Most such attempts rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary citizen, by exercising his critical judgment, will accept the good and reject the bad. The censors, public and private, assume that they should determine what is good and what is bad for their fellow-citizens.

We trust Americans to recognize propaganda, and to reject obscenity. We do not believe they need the help of censors to assist them in this task. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be “protected” against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

We are aware, of course, that books are not alone in being subjected to efforts at suppression. We are aware that these efforts are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, films, radio, and television. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy.

Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of uneasy change and pervading fear. Especially when so many of our apprehensions are directed against an ideology, the expression of a dissident idea becomes a thing feared in itself, and we tend to move against it as against a hostile deed, with suppression.

And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with stress.

Now as always in our history, books are among our greatest instruments of freedom. They are almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. They are the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. They are essential to the extended discussion which serious thought requires and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized collections.

We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures towards conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the reader to choose freely from a variety of offerings.

The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free men will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.

We therefore affirm these propositions:

1. It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those which are unorthodox or unpopular with the majority.

Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept which challenges the established orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the democratic process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like these. We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.

2. Publishers and librarians do not need to endorse every idea or presentation contained in the books they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as the sole standard for determining what books should be published or circulated.

Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong that what one man can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.

3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to determine the acceptability of a book solely on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.

A book should be judged as a book. No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free men can flourish which draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.

4. The present laws dealing with obscenity should be vigorously enforced. Beyond that, there is no place in our society for extralegal efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.

To some, much of modern literature is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent serious artists from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters taste differs, and taste cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised which will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.

We deplore the catering to the immature, the retarded, or the maladjusted taste. But those concerned with freedom have the responsibility of seeing to it that each individual book or publication, whatever its contents, price or method of distribution, is dealt with in accordance with due process of law.

5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any book the prejudgment of a label characterizing the book or author as subversive or dangerous.

The idea of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for the citizen. It presupposes that each individual must be directed in making up his mind about the ideas he examines. But Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.

6. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people’s freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large.

It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or group. In a free society each individual is free to determine for himself what he wishes to read, and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive.

7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, bookmen can demonstrate that the answer to a bad book is a good one, the answer to a bad idea is a good one.

The freedom to read is of little consequence when expended on the trivial; it is frustrated when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for his purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of their freedom and integrity, and the enlargement of their service to society, requires of all bookmen the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their support.

From a deceptively comfortable position in the middle of the 1960s, most librarians looked forward to the 1970s with optimism, hoping for a favorable climate for intellectual freedom. The U.S. Supreme Court extended constitutional support and protection in many areas of human and civil rights. Very encouraging to librarians was the expansion of freedom of expression and other First Amendment rights to allow publications that could not have been found fifteen years earlier. An unfettered climate in which all ideas could be freely exchanged seemed imminent.

But the sense of optimism was soon undercut as increased American involvement in the Vietnam War prompted rancorous divisions among citizens and members of the government. And then came 1968. On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, and the race riots provoked in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere led President Lyndon B. Johnson to call out troops to restore order. By April 14, violence had erupted in twenty-nine states. On June 6 Robert F. Kennedy died in Los Angeles, also a victim of an assassin’s bullet. From August 25 to 29, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago became the scene of violent clashes between the police and National Guard troops on one side and more than ten thousand antiwar demonstrators on the other. This period of violent dissent, countered by equally violent reactions, continued into 1970 with the Kent State and Jackson, Mississippi, incidents and battles between the Black Panther Party and police, and between the radical Weather Underground and police.

It became increasingly clear that such incidents of violent dissent and violent reactions were gradually eroding prospects for the open society many had envisioned. The “permissive” atmosphere collided with demands for law and order. One effect of the collision was that, little by little, the supports for intellectual freedom in the society at large were weakened.

In the form of subpoenas, pressure was brought against news reporters, photographers, and television broadcasting corporations to divulge sources of information and to produce unpublished materials deleted from final reports. Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a series of speeches condemning the news media for biased reporting and calling on citizens to protest such reporting. President Richard M. Nixon promised to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court.

Recognizing the increasing conservatism of the nation, and mindful that The Freedom to Read might be tied too closely to the McCarthy era, the Intellectual Freedom Committee began, in the fall of 1968, to consider the need for and desirability of a new statement to serve the 1970s. A careful review of the document resulted in the following points:

1. Article 4, urging the vigorous enforcement of “the present laws dealing with obscenity,” should be revised or deleted entirely.

2. The basic sentiments expressed in The Freedom to Read remain valid and should not be distorted.

3. The document has historical significance.

4. A new statement is needed dealing specifically with the pressures on today’s society and those foreseen arising during the next decade.

Believing a new statement should at least be attempted, the IFC asked the National Book Committee (NBC) and the American Book Publishers Council, the cosponsor of The Freedom to Read, whether they were interested in joining the undertaking. Both replied affirmatively. Theodore Waller and Peter Jennison met with the IFC during the 1969 Midwinter Meeting in Washington, D.C., and formed a subcommittee composed of representatives from the ABPC, ALA, and NBC, charged with determining content and preparing a draft document.

Meeting during the 1969 ALA Annual Conference in Atlantic City, the subcommittee—composed of Edwin Castagna, Peter Jennison, Judith F. Krug, Dan Lacy, and Theodore Waller—discussed the two major items: (1) Should The Freedom to Read be revised, or should a new document be produced? and (2) What kind of ammunition is needed to meet the challenge of the 1970s? Like the IFC, the subcommittee decided to design a new statement that would meet the challenges of the 1970s. The subcommittee also considered such questions as: Can the freedom to read be separated from intellectual freedom? Is a broader concept of intellectual freedom, embracing the First Amendment together with other aspects of the Bill of Rights, such as the invasion of privacy, needed? Should all media, not just books, be considered? Should complete intellectual freedom be called for, or must one retreat in the end to the principle of the freedom to read?

The subcommittee next met in August of that year, with a membership augmented by the presence of William DeJohn, Freeman Lewis, Harriet Pilpel, and Richard Sullivan. They drafted several statements and asked Jennison to assemble them into one cohesive document. Five drafts were subsequently produced, and the IFC, in a ten-to-one mail vote, approved the fifth draft. By the time of the 1970 Midwinter Meeting, however, a sixth draft had been prepared.

The ABPC Board of Directors received the draft and approved it by acclamation on January 28. The sixth draft was resubmitted to the IFC, which approved it in a ten-to-one vote.

Following the 1970 Midwinter Meeting, the staff of the Office for Intellectual Freedom carefully reviewed the sixth draft of the document, tentatively entitled “The Promise of the First Freedom: A Statement of Free Men.” The staff could not join with the IFC in endorsing this document and recommended to the IFC that The Freedom to Read be revised, as opposed to rewritten, to meet contemporary needs. This decision was based on several factors:

1. The major part of The Freedom to Read remained valid.

2. Among those parts that needed change were the specific references to books, for libraries were concerned with all types of materials.

3. Although The Freedom to Read had historical significance, subsequent policy statements, as well as actions, of the association were in opposition to a few parts, primarily Article 4.

4. The few parts in opposition were believed to be serious matters and should not be permitted to stand.

The revision was undertaken by the Office for Intellectual Freedom and W. Lester Smith of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the organization resulting from the consolidation of the ABPC and the American Educational Publishers Institute. The new document differed from the 1953 version on only a few significant points: the earlier call for “vigorous enforcement of present obscenity laws” was omitted, as was the reference to “the immature, the retarded, or the maladjusted taste.”

The revised Freedom to Read statement was approved by the ALA Council at the 1972 Midwinter Meeting and by the AAP as follows:

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove books from sale, to censor textbooks, to label “controversial” books, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to the use of books and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating them, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and to reject it. We do not believe they need the help of censors to assist them in this task. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be “protected” against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

Now as always in our history, books are among our greatest instruments of freedom. They are almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. They are the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. They are essential to the extended discussion which serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized collections.

The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.

We therefore affirm these propositions:

1. It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those which are unorthodox or unpopular with the majority.

2. Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation contained in the books they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what books should be published or circulated.

Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.

3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to determine the acceptability of a book on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.

4. There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.

To some, much of modern literature is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters taste differs, and taste cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised which will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.

5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any book the prejudgment of a label characterizing the book or author as subversive or dangerous.

7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, bookmen can demonstrate that the answer to a bad book is a good one, the answer to a bad idea is a good one.

The freedom to read is of little consequence when expended on the trivial; it is frustrated when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for his purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of their freedom and integrity; and the enlargement of their service to society, requires of all bookmen the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their support.

We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of books. We do so because we believe that they are good, possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.

The document was subsequently endorsed by many other organizations: the American Booksellers Association; American Civil Liberties Union; American Federation of Teachers; AFL-CIO; Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; Association of American University Presses; Bureau of Independent Publishers and Distributors; Children’s Book Council; Freedom of Information Center; Freedom to Read Foundation; Magazine Publishers Association; Motion Picture Association of America; National Association of College Stores; National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association of the U.S.A.; National Book Committee; National Council of Negro Women; National Council of Teachers of English; National Library Week Program; P.E.N.–American Center; Periodical and Book Association of America; Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S.; and Women’s National Book Association.

By 1990, both the IFC and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee were in agreement that The Freedom to Read needed minor revisions. In addition, it recently had gone out of print. At the Annual Conference in June, Richard Kleeman of the Association of American Publishers recommended minor changes, including removal of gender-specific language. It also was suggested that the new draft incorporate international concerns about the freedom to read.

A major question in regard to a revised statement was whether it should be more explicitly inclusive of the arts and music—targets of many then-recent censorship battles. Again the view was strongly expressed that the statement had stood the test of time and would only be diminished by extensive revisions. The IFC agreed to proceed with a review and report back at the 1991 Midwinter Meeting. Richard Kleeman said the AAP Freedom to Read Committee would follow the same timetable.

In January 1991 the IFC considered two new drafts: one without gender-specific language and the other with a new international focus. Ultimately, the committee decided to adopt only the first version and to address international and other concerns in separate documents. On January 16, 1991, the committee adopted The Freedom to Read as revised and so informed the ALA Council. Given the editorial nature of the changes, no action by the council was required. On the same date, at its regular monthly meeting, the AAP Freedom to Read Committee adopted the same revision.

In line with the ongoing practice of periodic review, the IFC carefully reviewed all statements, including The Freedom to Read, in 1999–2000, especially in regard to their applicability to the Internet. At the 2000 Midwinter Meeting, IFC member Carolyn Caywood, who had been assigned the task of reviewing The Freedom to Read, presented a revision that she said did not tamper with the spirit of the statement but only updated certain phrases and terminologies. After discussion by the IFC, Caywood, along with IFC members Vivian Wynn and Paul Vermouth, drafted further refinements that they felt broadened the statement beyond print material. The revised document was adopted by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee on July 12, 2000, and read as follows:

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary citizen, by exercising critical judgment, will accept the good and reject the bad. The censors, public and private, assume that they should determine what is good and what is bad for their fellow citizens.

We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they need the help of censors to assist them in this task. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be “protected” against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, art and images, films, broadcast media, and the Internet. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy.

Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of accelerated change. And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference.

Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms. The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended discussion that serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized collections.

We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings. The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.

We therefore affirm these propositions:

1. It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox or unpopular with the majority.

Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept that challenges the established orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the democratic process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like these. We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.

2. Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what should be published or circulated.

Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.

3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to writings on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.

No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.

To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters values differ, and values cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised that will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.

5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any expression the prejudgment of a label characterizing it or its author as subversive or dangerous.

The idea of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for the citizen. It presupposes that individuals must be directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.

It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or group. In a free society, individuals are free to determine for themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive.

7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate that the answer to a “bad” book is a good one, the answer to a “bad” idea is a good one.

The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for that reader’s purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of the freedom to read requires of all publishers and librarians the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their support.

We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of the written word. We do so because we believe that it is possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.

The Freedom to Read statement was reconsidered by the IFC during the 2004–5 review of intellectual freedom policies. The committee decided to recommend a few changes in light of the political environment since September 11, 2001. Judith Platt represented the AAP Freedom to Read Committee during the discussions.

The changes made fell into three categories:

1. During this review, all uses of the word “censor” were reviewed to ensure they are not gratuitous. As a result, the two statements about censors in the second and third paragraphs were determined to be unnecessary for the strength of the message and were removed.

2. References to “citizens” were examined to ensure that the use was not unnecessarily limiting. With one exception (“The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely to them”), the committee changed “citizens” to “others,” “individuals,” and “Americans.”

3. Phrases were added in appropriate places throughout the statement to address threats to the freedom to read and the free flow of information resulting from government surveillance, censorship, and secrecy.

The revised Freedom to Read statement was adopted by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee on June 30, 2004.

Note

1. For full details of national and international events surrounding the development of The Freedom to Read, see Everett T. Moore, “Intellectual Freedom,” in Research Librarianship: Essays in Honor of Robert B. Downs, ed. Jerrold Orne (New York: Bowker, 1971), 1–17.