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no. 23_april 2026

On Education

editorial: censorship & education: a brief introduction

When and why is censorship harmful? When and why is censorship perhaps necessary? By what authority ought materials to be censored? Does censorship have a legitimate place in education? Or finally, given the contested nature of democratic decision-making and curricular selection, is censorship simply inevitable?
In this issue of On_Education, a number of scholars will grapple with these topics and questions, and provide a diversity of opinions and perspectives on censorship in education in all its forms. With these essays, the editors hope to foster a lively discussion, while also encouraging a number of counter-intuitive perspectives that challenge dominant narratives about censorship in education.

Eric Berkowitz

the censorship of history and the fragility of power

The desire of governments to justify their authority and discredit adversaries by revising history is as old as history itself. While it is no surprise that authoritarian regimes would jettison truth in these efforts, the compulsion to abandon historical accuracy is no less evident in democracies such as the United States. This article traces the history of government censorship of history education over the past century and argues that a warts-and-all approach to such instruction is essential to teach students critical reasoning, the skills needed for self-government, and a measure of compassion for their fellow citizens.

Cherian George

censorship amid academic ‘excellence’: internalised, targeted, and performative

The article explores the complex terrain of contemporary academic freedom, drawing on the author’s personal experiences of censorship in Singapore as well as global studies on freedom of expression. It argues that although archetypal state censorship – external, visible, and coercive – remains a feature of higher education, many restrictions are indirect and institutionalised within university bureaucracies. They tend to be highly targeted, such that only a minority of scholars working on sensitive topics are directly affected. Universities are therefore able to practise censorship even as they pursue excellence, at least as measured by the higher education industry and global ranking agencies. Another common feature of academic censorship is its performative purpose. Often, it is less about removing ideas from circulation than an opportunity for university administrators to signal their compliance with government leaders and other powerful actors.

Avi Mintz

reflections on ancient and modern censorship in education

In the West, educational censorship dates to the earliest educational innovators, the sophists. The Spartans, for example, told the sophist Hippias that they would only approve of his lectures of ancient history. A generation later, Plato outlined in The Republic a censorship regime for his imagined kallipolis to flourish – an argument that one critic described as having “hung like a stench over discussions about censorship for two millennia” (Berkowitz, 2021, pp. 20-21). In this essay, Avi Mintz explores how educational censorship in antiquity differs from school censorship since the Enlightenment. While educational censorship in antiquity focused on the complete removal of targeted teachers, ideas and, materials from society, modern school censorship focused on school curriculum alone. This change was controversial in the Enlightenment. Some believed that, in a society increasingly tolerant of a range of views, schools must be free from curricular control. Others, however, argued that censorship was even more important in a time of pluralism; how else could social cohesion and patriotism be cultivated among diverse citizens? As Benjamin Rush (1965/1786) famously put it, schools must be used to “convert men into republican machines” (p. 10). Modern approaches to school censorship raise a challenging question: How might we distinguish the inevitable selection involved in curriculum from censorship? Mintz argues that no meaningful distinctions between the two exist; they are distinctions without a difference. However, these debates about censorship or curriculum selection – whatever we choose to call them – remain important: they present opportunities for articulating a vision for what our society and our citizens might become.

Laura D´Olimpio

banning bad books: on aesthetic education and censorship

Artworks are powerful and may convey hateful messages just as effectively as non-offensive messages. In recent years we have seen the importance of interpreting artworks in a context has grown, as has the acceptance of critiquing the social, political and ethical values artworks may embody or convey (whether or not intended by the artist). In this article, I explore two different responses to offensive art: disrupting it and banning it. In general terms, when it comes to public spaces such as art galleries and museums, I am in favour of disrupting but not banning offensive artworks. However, an increased sensitivity to discrimination makes teaching many classical artworks tricky. Should we continue to show and admire ethically problematic artworks, teaching them alongside a critically engaged contextualising attitude that may diminish their aesthetic aura? Or, should we engage in forms of censorship when it comes to particular artworks in schools? Art curators and activists have found ways other than censorship to counter problematic artworks’ political and ethical connotations. I defend pedagogical equivalents of such practices that encourage students to engage critically and contextually with artworks. Yet I also defend the need to censor some artworks in schools. I offer criteria for consideration – which I label content, context and presentation – that can be used to determine when there is a case for aesthetic censorship within schools.

Ruben Zeeman

modalities of censorship in history production

Censorship is a complex and contested phenomenon. In this paper, I examine one domain in which censorship is ubiquitous: the production of history. I proceed in three steps. First, I outline ongoing debates over definitions of censorship and free speech, analyzing the differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ censorship theory and suggesting the usefulness of Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘language games’ in analyzing the gap between them. Moreover, I point to the, ironic, ‘Western imprint’ on most censorship theory. Second, I draw out some of the different modalities of censorship of history production by examining the works of Antoon de Baets and Michel-Rolph Trouillot. I argue that, although they can be read as exponents of ‘old’ and ‘new’ censorship theory respectively, their theories are more complex and at times intersect. I suggest that a dialogic reading, acknowledging the different epistemological assumptions that constitute their respective points of departure, can be productive in analyzing the different modalities of censorship in history production. Finally, I reflect on a set of recently formulated ‘good practices’ to counter censorship of history production, including integrity and professional solidarity. I conclude by arguing that these practices overlook the pervasive coloniality of historical knowledge production and the inherently censorial force of the historian and the historical field. My examples throughout the paper will come, in line with this special issue’s focus, from history education.

Sarah M. Stitzlein

broadening and deepening epistemic communities in response to university censorship

This article describes the impact of affective and belief polarization on growing direct and indirect censorship in institutions of higher education. While conventional responses to censorship often rely on appeals to free speech based on individualist rights claims, this article calls for an alternative response: broadening and deepening learning communities. It argues that universities should focus on cultivating trust, fostering collaborative inquiry, and embracing a wide array of evidence and perspectives in order to fulfill their epistemic and civic missions. In doing so, universities can resist the narrowing of knowledge caused by polarization and censorship, and instead model the conditions necessary for improved learning and healthy democracy. While this article focuses largely on censorship in the United States, the educational recommendations extend beyond its borders.

Joanna Wojdon

censorship of school textbooks in communist Poland

The text explores the role of censorship in shaping the contents of school textbooks published in the Polish People’s Republic. An analysis of archival documents of the censorship office, primarily from the Stalinist era, reveals that censors not only removed content undesirable from the communist authorities’ perspective but also demanded that school textbooks be saturated with political propaganda. Although the materials concerning the post-1956 period are much more laconic, censorship operated until the end of the communist system in Poland, leaving its mark not only on the editorial footer of each book, where the censor’s code was listed, but also influencing the ideological control exercised at every stage of a textbook’s creation, at the desks of the authors, the publisher and the Ministry of Education.

Liz Jackson

fifty shades of academic self-censorship

While censorship has been examined often in relation to academic freedom and free speech, self-censorship has been less often explored. This may be because there are many ‘shades of gray’ when it comes to self-censorship. For instance, self-censorship can be seen as a pragmatic or natural (or educational) response to scholarly peer review or teacher feedback, an act of moral cowardice, or the mark of serious epistemic injustice and conformism. So, what is self-censorship, and why is it bad? In this brief essay, I elucidate on some of the shades of gray as well as some of the risks and challenges of self-censorship. I explore self-censorship both as a common academic practice and as a mechanism of preserving the status quo. I consider the implications for thinking through self-censorship in relation to academic freedom and reflect on other considerations for future research.

censorship

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