Education
More than half of books banned last year featured LGBTQ characters or people of color, report finds
More than half of books banned during the last school year featured or were about people of color or members of the LGBTQ community, according to a report released Thursday.
PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released data in the fall that found more than 10,000 instances of schools or their districts removing books from school, classrooms or curriculums last year, affecting 4,218 titles. The analysis released Thursday found that those bans disproportionately affect books about certain identities, including people of color, and also more often apply to certain genres, such as history.
The analysis found that 36% of the more than 4,000 banned titles featured characters or people of color and 25% included LGBTQ characters or people. Of the titles featuring LGBTQ people, 28% featured a transgender and/or genderqueer character. One in 10 of the banned titles featured characters or people with a physical and/or learning or developmental disability, the analysis found.
“This targeted censorship amounts to a harmful assault on historically marginalized and underrepresented populations — a dangerous effort to erase their stories, achievements, and history from schools,” Sabrina Baêta, senior manager for PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said in a statement. “When we strip library shelves of books about particular groups, we defeat the purpose of a library collection that is supposed to reflect the lives of all people. The damaging consequences to young people are real.”
Book challenges and bans — which are often spearheaded by parents and conservative activists — have skyrocketed in recent years, according to the American Library Association, which found that in 2024 the number of books challenged in libraries across the U.S. reached the highest level ever documented by the nonprofit. During the 2021 school year, PEN America found that more than 1,600 books were banned in schools, compared to the 4,218 removed from shelves last year.
For the first time, PEN America tracked the genres that were banned in schools. The top banned genres last year were realistic fiction, dystopia/sci-fi/fantasy, history and biography, mystery and thriller, educational and memoir and autobiography. Picture books and books with graphic or illustrated content made up nearly one-fifth, or 17%, of all banned books.
The nonprofit found that people of color and LGBTQ people were disproportionately affected across multiple categories. For example, 44% of banned history and biography titles featured people of color, and 26% featured Black people, specifically. Of the banned titles with pictures or illustrated content, 60% had illustrations related to race and racism or featured characters of color.
Of banned history and biography titles, 25% featured LGBTQ people and 9% featured trans and genderqueer people. More than one-third, 39%, of banned titles with pictures or illustrated content included LGBTQ themes and characters. Picture books made up about 2% of all banned titles, and PEN America found that “nowhere is the attack on stories of LGBTQ+ children and families more apparent” than in that category, where about 64% of all banned titles have LGBTQ+ characters or stories.
The analysis also found that book bans often affect titles that feature more than one marginalized identity. More than half, 54%, of all banned books with LGBTQ characters or people also featured characters or people of color.
Educational institutions that receive federal funding have become ground zero for the conservative-led effort in recent years to limit students’ access to information about race and racism as well as the LGBTQ community. Proponents of the restrictions argue that such information can make students uncomfortable and that students shouldn’t have access to sexually explicit material.
In Florida, for example, the state Department of Education in November released a list of hundreds of books — including “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut — that officials had removed from some schools across the state. Sydney Booker, a spokesperson for the department, told The Associated Press at the time that no books are being banned in the state.
“Once again, far left activists are pushing the book ban hoax on Floridians,” Booker said. “The better question is why do these activists continue to fight to expose children to sexually explicit materials.”
Critics of the bans argue that restricting access to information harms all students’ abilities to learn, can promote further discrimination and doesn’t allow students of color and LGBTQ students to see their lives reflected in books.
PEN America noted in the analysis that more than half of all U.S. schoolchildren are students of color, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Younger generations are also increasingly identifying as LGBTQ, according to a recent Gallup survey, which found that nearly one-quarter, 23.1%, of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ.
The nonprofit’s analysis also found that sex-related content is one of the most criticized subjects in book-banning efforts. However, PEN America found accusations that the targeted titles are “explicit” to be exaggerated. Out of the more than 4,000 overall titles banned last year, PEN America found that 31% had references to sexual experiences but with minimal detail, while 13% described the sexual experiences “on the page” with more descriptive sex scenes between characters.
“Books with sexual content allow students to raise questions about this aspect of human experience, which can help guide them,” PEN America’s analysis said, noting that books on other real-world experiences — such as death and grief, violence, abuse and mental health issues — made up more of the banned titles.
Blink and you’ll miss it: A Purdue University student engineering team has built a robot that can solve a Rubik’s cube in one-tenth of a second — faster than the average time it takes to blink an eye.
Their robot, called “Purdubik’s Cube,” set a Guinness World Record last month for the “fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube.” It successfully solved a mixed-up cube in just 0.103 seconds, a fraction of the previous record of 0.305 seconds, set by Mitsubishi Electric engineers in May 2024.
The robot, located on the Purdue campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, uses machine vision for color recognition, custom solving algorithms optimized for execution time and industrial-grade motion control hardware, according to a Purdue University press release.
The team, consisting of engineering students Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay and Alex Berta, initially created the robot to compete in the December 2024 Spark Challenge, a design competition for students in Purdue’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. After they won first place, they continued to improve the robot with sponsorship help from Purdue’s Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks.
The achievement isn’t all fun and games: Ultra-fast coordinated robotic systems like Purdubic’s Cube are already used in a variety of industries, including in manufacturing and packaging applications.
The Rubik’s Cube first become a cultural phenomenon in the 1980s, languished in the 1990s, and has enjoyed a surprise resurgence with the rise of the internet helping lead to speedcubing — competitions to see how fast people (and now machines) can solve the 3 x 3 puzzle.
People now regularly compete in events to solve Rubik’s Cubes in a variety of ways, even blindfolded. But the fastest person can’t come close to Purdue’s robot. The current human world record is held by Max Park, who solved a cube in 3.13 seconds in 2023.
New York University said it is withholding the diploma of a student who delivered an unapproved commencement speech to address what he called the “atrocities currently happening in Palestine” during the Israel-Hamas war.
The prestigious private university quickly condemned the speech delivered by student Logan Rozos on Wednesday.
“NYU strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation today—one of over 20 school graduation ceremonies across our campus—to misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views,” the school said in a statement Wednesday.
Rozos told members of his graduating class that he had been “freaking out a lot” about his speech, but his “moral and political commitments guide me to say that the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”
The ceremony was livestreamed on the school’s website, but a recording of it is not yet available. Videos of Rozos’ speech were posted online.
The camera panned to show some of his fellow classmates clapping and cheering.
“I want to say that the genocide currently occurring is supported politically and militarily by the United States, is paid for by our tax dollars, and has been livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months,” Rozos continued. “I do not wish to speak only to my own politics today, but to speak for all people of conscience, all people who feel the moral injury of this atrocity. And I want to say that I condemn this genocide and complicity in this genocide.”
The camera panned again to show students clapping and standing.
The local Anti-Defamation League said it was “appalled” by the speech.
“We are thankful to the NYU administration for their strong condemnation and their pursuit of disciplinary action,” the ADL said in a post Thursday on X.
The university said Rozos “lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules.”
“The University is withholding his diploma while we pursue disciplinary actions,” the school said. “NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him.”
BOSTON — Harvard University for decades assumed it had a cheap copy of the Magna Carta in its collection, a stained and faded document it had purchased for less than $30.
But two researchers have concluded it has something much more valuable — a rare version from 1300 issued by Britain’s King Edward I.
The original Magna Carta established in 1215 the principle that the king is subject to law, and it has formed the basis of constitutions globally. There are four copies of the original and, until now, there were believed to be only six copies of the 1300 version.
“My reaction was one of amazement and, in a way, awe that I should have managed to find a previously unknown Magna Carta,” said David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King’s College London. He was searching the Harvard Law School Library website in December 2023 when he found the digitized document.
“First, I’d found one of the most rare documents and most significant documents in world constitutional history,” Carpenter said. “But secondly, of course, it was astonishment that Harvard had been sitting on it for all these years without realizing what it was.”
Confirming the document’s authenticity
Carpenter teamed up with Nicholas Vincent, a professor of medieval history at Britain’s University of East Anglia, to confirm the authenticity of Harvard’s document.
Comparing it to the other six copies from 1300, Carpenter found the dimensions matched up. He and Vincent then turned to images Harvard librarians created using ultraviolet light and spectral imaging. The technology helps scholars see details on faded documents that are not visible to the human eye.
That allowed them to compare the texts word-for-word, as well as the handwriting, which include a large capital ‘E’ at the start in ‘Edwardus’ and elongated letters in the first line.
After the 1215 original printed by King John, five other editions were written in the following decades — until 1300, the last time the full document was set out and authorized by the king’s seal.
The 1300 version of Magna Carta is “different from the previous versions in a whole series of small ways and the changes are found in every single one,” Carpenter said.
Harvard had to meet a high bar to prove authenticity, Carpenter said, and it did so “with flying colors.”
Its tattered and faded copy of the Magna Carta is worth millions of dollars, Carpenter estimated — though Harvard has no plans to sell it. A 1297 version of the Magna Carta sold at auction in 2007 for $21.3 million.
A document with a colorful history
The other mystery behind the document was the journey it took to Harvard.
That task was left to Vincent, who was able to trace it all the way back to the former parliamentary borough of Appleby in Westmorland, England.
The Harvard Law School library purchased its copy in 1946 from a London book dealer for $27.50. At the time, it was wrongly dated as being made in 1327.
Vincent determined the document was sent to a British auction house in 1945 by a World War I flying ace who also played a role defending Malta in World War II. The war hero, Forster Maynard, inherited the archives from Thomas and John Clarkson, who were leading campaigners against the slave trade. One of them, Thomas Clarkson, became friends with William Lowther, hereditary lord of the manor of Appleby, and he possibly gave it to Clarkson.
“There’s a chain of connection there, as it were, a smoking gun, but there isn’t any clear proof as yet that this is the Appleby Magna Carta. But it seems to me very likely that it is,” Vincent said. He said he would like to find a letter or other documentation showing the Magna Carta was given to Thomas Clarkson.
Making Magna Carta relevant for a new generation
Vincent and Carpenter plan to visit Harvard in June to see its Magna Carta firsthand — and they say the document is as relevant as ever at a time when Harvard is clashing with the Trump administration over how much authority the federal government should have over its leadership, admissions and activism on campus.
“It turns up at Harvard at precisely the moment where Harvard is under attack as a private institution by a state authority that seems to want to tell Harvard what to do,” Vincent said.
It also is a chance for a new generation to learn about the Magna Carta, which played a part in the founding of the United States — from the Declaration of Independence to the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Seventeen states have incorporated aspects of it into their laws.
“We think of law libraries as places where people can come and understand the underpinnings of democracy,” said Amanda Watson, the assistant dean for library and information services at Harvard Law School. “To think that Magna Carta could inspire new generations of people to think about individual liberty and what that means and what self-governance means is very exciting.”
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