Check out the mission statement or strategic plan of most public or academic libraries, and you will swiftly encounter the near-universal assertion that libraries should strive to “create an inclusive environment.” For example, the Strategic Plan of the Brantford (Ontario) Public Library declares that “[a]n inclusive environment, where diverse backgrounds, identities and perspectives are valued” is essential to its role in the community. Some libraries have gone further and developed entire “inclusion policy statements,” such as the “Diversity and Inclusion Policy” of Hamilton (Ontario) Public Library. The library literature is similarly replete with commitments to inclusion, often in the context of providing equal opportunities for persons experiencing a disability, meeting diverse needs in facility design, welcoming seniors and integrating new immigrants.
These forms of inclusion are very positive and necessary. Most library professionals—and indeed the vast majority of the library-using public—will surely see nothing objectionable in such declarations. After all, who could oppose including all members of the public in publicly-funded libraries? If this is all the term “inclusion” means, then there should be no problem in championing it as a core professional value.
However, what few people understand is that the term inclusion is being used in professional and academic contexts to justify two rather different objectives. James Lindsay, writing at the New Discourses website, articulates the distinction between the two interpretations of inclusion as “not exclud[ing] anybody” on the one hand, and on the other a critical social justice commitment to welcoming marginalized groups by “silencing certain ideas like conservatism, meritocracy, or support for freedom of speech.” The first interpretation is integral to the mission of the public library; the second represents a potential conflict with laws governing free speech and the principle of intellectual freedom.
The first sense—being welcoming to everyone—has long been a core commitment of librarianship, and we see it articulated in the American Library Association’s 1939 Library Bill of Rights. The bill states that “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” Over the decades this recognition has expanded to removing barriers to accessibility, and ensuring that libraries are inclusive of persons with disabilities.
This historic view of inclusion contrasts with that espoused over the past couple of decades by critical and radical librarianship—which advocates for broadening the scope of inclusion to encompass matters of race, sexuality and gender identity in pursuit of social justice. This version of inclusion fuels a more activist approach to librarianship. For example, the Inclusion Policy of the Oakville (Ontario) Public Library vows to “actively challenge and break down systemic oppression,” while the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Policy of the London (Ontario) Public Library, commits to “apply[ing] an anti-racism and anti-oppression lens to our purpose, values [and] strategic plan…”
These opposing views constitute what Stephen Macdonald calls a “Values War” in librarianship between neutrality and interventionism. To establish the nature of this “war,” Macdonald cites a 2022 article I co-wrote with John Wright, in which we articulate two distinct definitions of neutrality: a mistaken ontological belief that libraries are neutral, and a normative ethical commitment that the library worker should strive to carry out their duties in a neutral fashion. Furthermore, we specified that neutrality referred to personal and institutional values, the library’s stakeholders, transparent processes, and respect for the goals of the user. It is this latter version that we recommended, arguing that in diverse, multicultural, and multifaith societies such as ours, activism on the part of the library worker to advance their favored socio-political cause or group risks alienating at least some of those diverse constituencies.
This sense of neutrality and universality is reflected in the Canadian Federation of Library Associations’ “Position Statement on Diversity and Inclusion” which asserts that “Libraries act to ensure that people can enjoy services free from any attempt by others to impose values, customs or beliefs.” However, the critical social justice version of inclusion risks excluding books or speakers to which favored groups might object, and adjudicating rights claims unequally.
Such was the case in an incident at the Mary L. Stephens Davis Library in Davis, California (a branch of the Yolo County Library) in August of 2023: A young woman defending women-only sports and sex-based rights (also known as gender-critical feminism) as part of a program entitled “Forum on Fair and Safe Sport for Girls” (a Moms for Liberty event) was ejected from the program room by the library’s regional director for referring to trans-identified athletes as “males” and “biological men.” The incident sparked a lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, resulting in the library agreeing to change their policy and allow Moms for Liberty to hold their event. Additionally, the library paid the claimants $70,000 in damages and legal fees. Earlier that same year, the London (Ontario) Public Library system cancelled an event sponsored by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) because their speaker Dr. Joanna Williams was to deliver a free public talk entitled “Sex, Gender, and the Limits of Free Speech on Campus.” The Library claimed (with no small irony) that the subject matter would violate their commitment to “anti-oppression” and so the Society was forced to move the event to another venue.
Furthermore, (and as I’ve previously written at Heterodoxy in the Stacks), some librarians have been practicing “shadow banning” of works they find objectionable by refusing to purchase them at all or in sufficient numbers to meet demand. Academic librarians in particular have, in large numbers, publicly disavowed efforts to represent gender-critical perspectives in libraries, whether through adult collections (e.g., purchasing copies of Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage) or public speaking events (e.g., Toronto Public Library hosting Meghan Murphy in 2019). I have therefore argued that
[a]cting with such prejudice towards a particular point of view risks our social license as professionals, the permission granted by the public to act in their interest. For…members of the public, shadow-banning controversial materials concerning gender ideology results in a situation where—as fired Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library CEO Cathy Simpson argues—the “‘freedom to read’ has come to mean the freedom to read what certain librarians have decided you should have the freedom to read.”
These examples illustrate how “inclusive” policies can result, ironically, in a form of exclusion. In applying this social justice lens to library policy, librarians can end up imposing their own world views onto the craft and seeking to champion diversity and inclusion through the removal of ideas they view as harmful. All other things being equal, however, holding unpopular views–even those some find offensive–is not grounds for censorship.
The public library as an institution has always embraced and trained its workers to expect and accommodate conflicting views. As the Canadian Federation of Library Associations acknowledges, “an acceptance of differences can place individual and collective values in conflict.” For this reason, institutions like public libraries simply cannot embrace a particular political agenda or adopt and champion the grievances of one group, while at the same professing to provide a welcoming environment to diverse, multicultural, multiethnic, and multifaith communities–who will (inevitably) not universally share those priorities.
The problem is not that some public libraries are explicitly positioning their inclusion policies as either “neutral” or “interventionist,” but rather that this distinction isn’t widely recognized. As a result, it’s not difficult to imagine a public library inclusion policy stating both that it strives to be “welcoming to everyone” while also adopting an explicitly “anti-oppression” lens in order to “dismantle systems of oppression,” while not realizing how incompatible these approaches can be in practice.
To be clear, these do not, in policy terms, represent distinctly-articulated and mutually-exclusive approaches, but rather positions existing on a spectrum, whereby an institution leans either in the direction of neutrality or interventionist radicalism. For example, a library espousing neutrality is still capable of recognizing that not all users or user communities come from the same backgrounds, economic capacities, or abilities, and may require extra attention in terms of policies or facilities so that all are afforded equal opportunities to access information. At the other end of the spectrum, political favoritism for one constituency can end up excluding the interests of other groups, resulting in library spaces not only lacking in diversity of ideas but in actually physically removing people from the library for espousing those ideas.
The rights which librarians have always professed to defend, including the freedom to read and the commitment to securing the intellectual freedom of our users, stand jeopardized. If “inclusion” actually means excluding books, ideas, and legal speech that we believe one group may find offensive–or which we personally oppose for ideological reasons–then librarianship as a publicly-trusted profession risks becoming delegitimized in the eyes of the tax-paying public. If public libraries are to promote equal opportunities for users while avoiding being drawn into identitarian conflicts, it matters a great deal what principles libraries choose to include in their definition of “inclusion.” How these centers of knowledge and community understand inclusion can determine which worldviews are allowed to remain, and which are unduly silenced.
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