Library Attacks Highlight Authoritarian Agenda

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Last Updated on: 24th March 2025, 11:10 am

When I was a child, my old Irish grandmother would bundle my sister and me into her sky blue Plymouth sedan with an image of the Mayflower on the hood and take us downtown to the Providence Public Library on Saturday mornings. There, we would sit on the steps leading to the main entrance and listen as a librarian read books to us. As I recall, Dr. Seuss was often the author featured. That’s where I learned about The Cat In The Hat and The 10,000 Hats Of Bartholomew Cubbins. The library was always a place of wonder for me. On its shelves were books that contained all of the combined knowledge of the human species since people first learned how to write. My grandmother told us regularly, “If you can read, you can do anything.” Before there was the internet, or Google, or AI, there was the reference section in the library, a place where the staff would help the curious find answers to questions like, “How many people live in China?” or “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” The library was the intellectual center for many communities across America.

The putative president of the United States, who is renowned for his unwillingness to read anything longer than a paragraph — make that a short paragraph — has proposed eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services and has appointed Keith Sonderling to be its acting director until such time as it can be dismantled completely. The stated goal for Sonderling is to reshape the agency to  prioritize “promoting American exceptionalism” and cultivate “patriotism.” How this is different than the Communist Party in Russia or China installing loyal apparatchiks at every level of society to enforce compliance with official dogma is a mystery.

The Library As Institution Of Learning

Leo Lo is president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and a dean and professor at the University of New Mexico. Writing in The Guardian recently, he said the attack on libraries has been building for years amid increased bans on books, rising censorship, and growing hostility toward educational and cultural institutions. The IMLS was established in 1996 as the primary federal agency providing financial support to libraries and museums nationwide. It invests hundreds of millions of dollars annually to help institutions develop literacy programs, workforce training, digital resources, cultural preservation and civic engagement initiatives. Cutting this funding is more than just budget trimming. It means dismantling essential community infrastructure, Lo writes.

“Many argue that libraries have become obsolete relics in the age of Google and smartphones, but reality says otherwise. About 77 million Americans depend annually on public libraries for reliable internet access, according to Pew Research. In Dallas, Texas, for instance, nearly 3.9 million digital resources were checked out from the public library last year alone, proving these institutions remain essential gateways to digital opportunity — especially for economically disadvantaged families,” he argues.

The consequences of losing federal support would also profoundly harm academia, weakening America’s ability to innovate and remain globally competitive, Lo argues. The targeting of library funding appears to be financial, but it’s deeply political. In 2024, the American Library Association reported 1,247 attempts to ban library books nationwide, largely targeting works related to race, gender identity, and LGBTQ+ experiences. Librarians increasingly face intimidation simply for defending intellectual freedom, the very principle libraries have always championed. Yet libraries remain nonpartisan, practical institutions focused on ensuring equitable access to information, learning, and civic participation. From Boston’s Edward M Kennedy Institute, which offers IMLS supported immersive Senate debate simulations, to voter registration drives and disability-inclusive voting programs in Illinois and Alaska, libraries sustain democracy itself.

Cross-Border Library Affected

Leo Lo may be on to something. Last week, the US government blocked Canadians’ access to the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the border between Canada and the US border. It was built in the early 1900s to serve the communities of Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont, and serves as a symbol of cooperation and friendship between the two countries. While the entrance is on the Vermont side, about 60% of the building, including most of its books, is located in Canada. In the opera house on the second floor, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.

Until recently, Canadians using the library simply walked across the border with a smile and a wave to border officials. Under the new rules, Canadians will need to go through a formal border crossing before entering the library. “This closure not only compromises Canadian visitors’ access to a historic symbol of cooperation and harmony between the two countries but also weakens the spirit of cross-border collaboration that defines this iconic location,” the town of Stanstead said in a press release on Thursday.

In a statement to Reuters, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said “Drug traffickers and smugglers were exploiting the fact that Canadians could use the US entrance without going through customs. We are ending such exploitation by criminals and protecting Americans.” The Guardian reports that in 2018 a Quebec man named Alexis Vlachos pleaded guilty in a Vermont court to charges relating to a plot to use the library to smuggle backpacks full of handguns into Canada on at least two occasions. He was later sentenced to 51 months in a US prison.

The current administration is using an unsubstantiated claim that Canada is allowing people to bring massive amounts of fentanyl into the United States as the basis for a threat to annex Canada. That claim is also the justification for the chaotic tariff policies of this administration. Students of history, who may have learned its lessons thanks to a library, can draw a parallel between the fentanyl fantasy and Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938. It is a pretext for doing things that would otherwise be deemed outrageous breaches of the rules that govern a civil society.

Ignorance Is Expensive

The kind of officially sanctioned stupidity in the US will have powerful and long lasting consequences. Everybody wants to slam the Chinese for unabashed support for local industries — support that has been instrumental in making that country the dominant manufacturer of solar panels, wind turbines, HVDC transmission lines, high speed rail, and electric vehicles. While some of those criticisms are valid, China’s national policies have created a flood of highly educated  citizens with advanced degrees in chemistry, physics, and computer technology. BYD claims to have more than 150,000 engineers in its employ. Now colleges and universities in Europe are offering programs to attract scholars who are disillusioned by America’s turn inward or are being excluded by its nativist policies.

The Guardian reports that in six weeks since the US inauguration, its “rapid scheduled disassembly” of American science has been as sharp and deep as its trashing of the US’s alliances and goodwill. Earth science, weather forecasting, medical research (including cancer research), and NASA have all been disrupted. Academic grants of all kinds have been cut, paused, and subject to review for a long list of banned words such as “political” and “women.” In response, US universities have reduced their number of PhD students, medical students, and other graduate students, introduced hiring freezes, and even rescinded some offers of admission. More than 12,500 US citizens currently in other countries on Fulbright research grants recently had their funding paused, along with 7,400 foreign scholars currently hosted in the US.

On March 7, 2025, the University of Aix-Marseille announced Safe Place for Science, a three year, €15 million program to bring 15 American scientists working in climate, health, and astrophysics to its campus. According to a university spokesperson, more than 60 applications have been received, 30 of them coming within the first 24 hours. The university indicated that it has been in contact with other universities and the French government about expanding “scientific asylum” on both a national and European level, and to help coordinate welcoming and relocating different researchers.

There is bumper sticker that says, “If you think education is expensive, wait until you find out what ignorance costs.” That is a lesson the US is about to learn as it follows the insane anti-intellectual policies of a leader who reads nothing and is incapable of thinking of anything other than selling his presidency to the highest bidder. The last time America had a president with such limited intellectual gifts — a man whose idea of a good read was The Very Hungry Caterpillar — the US spent over $3 trillion on a war based on an outrageous fabrication. The current president probably thinks Horton Hears A Who is about an elephant. America will pay a heavy price for its slide into willful ignorance.