Title: Stuyvesant’s Thoughts on Trump’s Book Bans

Book bans, though a longstanding part of human history, have become increasingly common in the United States in recent years. On January 24, 2025, just four days after President Trump took office, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights removed the position of book ban coordinator, one created by former President Biden to investigate school districts accused of censorship. Now, as the Trump administration makes moves to reshape the nation’s education system, the federal government has begun to challenge more books, especially those containing content about race, LGBTQ+ people, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Books like Gender Queer, This Book is Gay, and The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel were banned over a dozen times, and the list of banned books in primarily red school districts continues to grow. Though Stuyvesant exists in the political bubble of New York City, where book bans are seemingly irrelevant, the Stuyvesant community has strong reactions to the practice. 

Junior and co-president of AmneSTUY, Stuyvesant’s chapter of the human rights advocacy organization Amnesty International, Aasha Zamir first learned about book bans through a New York Times article. She was especially struck after learning that The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, which is about a Dominican teenager using poetry to discover her relationship with religion, her body, and her mother, was banned. “I remember being just really shocked,” Zamir recalled. “I read it in eighth grade, and there was nothing about it that I found violent [or] might be morally questionable that administrations felt the need to ban.”

Junior Calliope Cambanis, the co-president of Spectrum, Stuyvesant’s gay-straight alliance club, agrees with Zamir’s general surprise and fear surrounding book bans.“It’s just pretty scary. [It’s] restriction of ideas and thinking and just analysis of anything that’s going on that authoritarian governments really love, and it’s really disheartening and stressful to see that happening in the U.S., because you don’t usually imagine this is the kind of place where you’re going to be restricted in what you can think and say and read,” she said. 

It doesn’t take much to notice a pattern in the books that are the targets of bans; many have to do with marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ community. Targeting these books sends a clear message that certain groups aren’t accepted in Trump’s America. “For a lot of queer kids, it’s been books like these ones that are getting banned, like Gender Queer, that have helped them discover their identities and understand things about themselves. And I worry that a lot of kids in environments where being queer isn't accepted will not know that they can be,” Cambanis said. “They’ll think their identity is wrong or even nonexistent [...] if they don’t have access to these media.” Representation in the media is essential to affirming one’s identity, especially when they face oppression.

English teacher Anne Cooperstone noted that banning such books, including those that cover race, breed ignorance, erases essential perspectives. “You have a really quick list of everything they’re afraid of, what ideas they think are powerful​ - it's telling​ if they are banning books that criticize that establishment or that look at our history through a critical lens of race,” Cooperstone said.  

When the government has control over the literature that is taught, it shapes and limits the points of view of an entire generation. Not only does this limit individuals’ perspectives, but it also prevents meaningful opportunities for diversity of thought and expression, a concern librarian Mary McGregor expressed. “Sheltering people from content about equality, racism, LGBTQ+ people, capitalism, those ideas and their effects and our actual shared history in this country just makes them less informed and less prepared to be in the world,” she stated. Entering the world as an adult who has not read about specific “taboo” topics hinders any real progress on these issues.

Sophomore Opal Mathieu echoed this sentiment. “Controlling the flow of information like this gets really dangerous when you’re not giving people the opportunity to educate themselves or look at other topics, and that can be incredibly harmful because you force people to only look at one view of things. They get trapped in this echo chamber, and where it can become more and more extreme, and that’s incredibly toxic,” Mathieu said. If a student is never exposed to another point of view, they will come to easily accept the ideologies that have been repeatedly and exclusively reinforced, solidifying extremist views and preventing informed critical thinking. 

Of course, not all banned books outwardly cover such topics, making book bans seem arbitrary. Freckleface Strawberry, a children’s book by Julianne Moore about a girl who learns to accept her freckles, despite how they make her stand out, was recently banned by the Trump administration from schools operated by the Department of Defense. Though the subject of the book, freckles, may seem inconsequential, the story teaches young children about the importance of individuality and self-acceptance. “Freckles aren’t the only thing that make us different, but if you’re censoring even that, then that just shows the beginning of what might be worse,” junior Jane No commented. 

On January 24, the Office for Civil Rights claimed that banning books “is a question of parental and community judgement, not civil rights.” In New York City, when a book gets challenged by a parent, it must then be reviewed by a committee of librarians, students, and parents to assess whether it should remain in the collection. However, this is not true for all districts. “If you’re in a school that has no librarian and there are two parents who have a problem with a book, that’s all it can take to cause a problem and remove something for the whole school population, so that’s why having the safeguards [of professional librarians] in place is really important,” McGregor explained. “[Bans are] antithetical to the purpose of literature. I think most librarians’ professional ethos is to promote access to information and books and not to restrict it,” she added.

This perspective has become more widespread as books continue to be challenged by the government, fueling the question of whether it is ever acceptable to ban books. “I don’t think there is ever a justification for banning books. There’s always something to learn from a piece of literature. There’s still stuff to learn from archaic books,” Cambanis claimed. “Last year in English, I read The Merchant of Venice, which is a pretty insanely antisemitic work. And yet, there’s still a lot to learn there about antisemitism and about how Europe was in that time, in the 1500s. I think every book needs to be read in context. Obviously, we shouldn’t have books that could be harmful being checked out as a fun read, but as long as every book is given its proper context, like where you read it, how you read it, [or] whether it’s annotated,” she continued. Reading controversial books in a meaningful way can educate and enlighten readers about oppressive circumstances, allowing them to learn from history and prevent the past from repeating itself.

Cooperstone believes that the same rule applies when it comes to reading classics. “You can’t just not look at the starting point, even if that starting point is predominantly male and white, because that’s important too. I think what’s most crucial is the lens through which we look at [these works],” she commented. “[We must] look at it through the lens of ‘this is the point of view that has dominated the literary canon for basically all of time: Why is that? What voices aren’t we hearing? And how can we bring in those other voices to create a rounder chorus?’” Once people have been exposed to this more holistic set of viewpoints, they can decide for themselves whether or not they agree. Moreover, banning material that helps cultivate critical thinking skills is counterproductive to the goal of the education system.

Stuyvesant students are fortunate to have access to a wide range of books in the school’s library, which is run by four professional librarians who carefully decide selections. “I adhere to the idea of a framework by Rudine Sims Bishop called ‘Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Glass Doors,’” McGregor explained. “The idea is that the books in a collection should provide the readers chances to see other points of view, to see themselves in the books they read, and to transport into the world or point of view of a book when reading it.” Stuyvesant librarians are conscious of including multiple identities and perspectives in our school’s collection.

Additionally, Stuyvesant’s English curriculum incorporates books that have been challenged or banned in other states. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, for example, have been disputed since their release. Catcher in the Rye follows a teen who goes on a life-changing journey in New York after being expelled from prep school, and Fahrenheit 451 tells the tale of a fireman who rebels against a futuristic American government where all books are banned. These books, though controversial, share jarring parallels with today’s society, hence why it is so important to be exposed to them.

However, if these books were to be banned, Cooperstone believes that the English curriculum would not be greatly influenced; the beauty of books is that there exists a variety that share similar voices and themes. “We have a well of options at our disposal to serve as replacements if the ban goes through,” Cooperstone said. “I think the brilliant and creative English teachers [at Stuy] would be able to come up with a curriculum that can supplement what would be missing with voices that are just as crucial.”

Similarly, if books in our library’s collection were to be banned, Stuyvesant’s librarians would fight to protect them. “If someone were to challenge or ban a book in our collection, our duty would be to oppose that within our guidelines,” McGregor said.

Thus, despite the increasing attention surrounding these book bans, some students are still not convinced they will create a large impact. “I don’t feel very strongly [about the book bans] because even though the book is banned, we still have access to it, so they’re not really limiting my or anybody’s ability to read the books,” junior Julia Cho remarked. 

However, even though Stuyvesant may not be directly affected by book bans, it is important to have solidarity with those who are. “What [banning books] does is it creates this unequal access to education,” Zahir stated. “It just creates this potential for disaster for dangerous opinions to start spreading and for more people to be harmed just because of the way that they were raised and the education that they had growing up.” 

There are many ways that those who are against book bans can help push back, such as taking advantage of the books we do have access to. For example, many public libraries promote banned content by starting initiatives like banned book contests and clubs. “[I go] into a library, checking those books out to keep them in circulation,” sophomore Kemal Cater shared. They also help make change on a smaller scale. “I already read a lot of the [banned] books, but [also] I help take care of a little free library at my grandparents’ house; we’re definitely putting books that possibly could get banned or have already been banned,” Cater added. Small actions like these can have a large impact.  

No is also on a mission to read more banned books. “Banning books from schools doesn’t ban them from their country, so people can still go to the bookstore, pick up a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m gonna read a bunch of them,” she said. “I started reading Animal Farm, too.” 

There are also groups within Stuyvesant that already take initiative against book bans. Zahir shared how AmneSTUY works against the ban, stating, “We have a book ban week or ban book week campaign in which we highlight specific authors being suppressed, having their works being restricted in specific areas around the world.”

Aside from physical books, online resources are also very powerful for keeping access to challenged books. Cater believes that banning books won’t achieve the goal of limiting access to such books. Rather, the bans themselves may draw even more attention to the books, as well as the themes they portray. “Telling people [they] can’t read a book [makes them] more likely to try to find other ways to go and read that book. If anything, [it] encourages people to start reading banned books more,” Cater said. With challenged books available online, many believe that these texts may actually become more sought after.

Mathieu noted this phenomenon, stating, “I've definitely had experiences where I was kind of on the fence about reading something somebody pointed out, ‘Oh, that’s a banned book. A lot of people aren’t getting to read that,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I should definitely check that out and see what I can learn.’”

As fear about book bans continues to spread, it is important to focus on helping preserve access to commonly-challenged books, even though no book is currently banned in New York City; it is dangerous to assume that all schools have the same access to books as Stuyvesant. “I think it’s important to make note of the fact that there’s a lot of New York City Public Schools that don’t have certified librarians in their schools, so they might not even have a library where they can access books outside of their classroom. Or if they do have a library, they don’t necessarily have a certified librarian in the school that will advocate for books that parents want to challenge or ban,” McGregor said. Organizing book drives for disadvantaged schools closer to home is a great way to help keep these books accessible.

Fortunately at Stuyvesant, our teachers and librarians are committed to protecting our access to books. As students, we can continue to read diverse texts that cover subjects that are uncomfortable at times. By remaining informed, we can counteract book bans by being more prepared to fight back against them. Every person deserves to see themselves represented in literature, and every act of preserving these works has a nationwide impact on education.