Thursday, July 3, 2025

2012 Video of Bill Moyers on the Freedom to Read and the "Bane of Banning Books"; Ethics, Info, Tech: Contested Voices, Values, Spaces, July 3, 2025

Kip Currier; 2012 Video of Bill Moyers on the Freedom to Read and the "Bane of Banning Books"

Nobody writes more illuminating "I-didn't-know-THAT-about-that-person" obituaries than the New York Times. (I didn't know, for example, that Moyers was an ordained Baptist minister.) And, true to form, the Times has an excellent obituary detailing the service-focused life of Bill Moyers, who passed away on June 26, 2025 at the age of 91. 

The moment I learned of his death, my mind went to a 3-minute video clip of Moyers that I've continued to use in a graduate ethics course lecture I give on Intellectual Freedom and Censorship. The clip is from 2012 but the vital importance of libraries and the freedom to read that Moyers extolls is as timely and essential as ever, given the explosion of book bans and censorship besetting the U.S. right now.

Below is a description of the video clip and this is the video link:

"The Bane of Banned Books

September 25, 2012

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the American Library Association’s “Banned Books Week,” Bill talks about the impact libraries have had on his youth, his dismay over book challenges in modern times, and why censorship is the biggest enemy of truth."

https://billmoyers.com/content/the-bane-of-banned-books/

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