New College of Florida 'Statement on the Removal of Books and Library Materials' is Not Credible by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

New College of Florida ‘Statement on the Removal of Books and Library Materials’ Is Not Credible

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 22, 2025

I cannot get the images of mass book removals out of my mind, nor can I reconcile them with the university’s official claim that these actions reflect routine library “weeding” (see the August 14, 2024 Statement on the Removal of Books and Library Materials). What is plainly observable on campus tells a different story. Entire sections of shelving now sit empty—an outcome that goes far beyond standard thinning or rotation of materials and exceeds what is typically associated with responsible collection maintenance.

Source: 

Steven Walker

 @swalker_7 on Twitter

According to the American Library Association (2018), responsible collection maintenance is a selective, policy-driven, and content-neutral process—one that does not result in the wholesale disappearance of subject areas or function as a proxy for censorship. In library science, weeding is understood as an incremental practice intended to refresh collections, not one that produces visible gaps across disciplines or coincides with the elimination of academic programs.

The timing, scale, and physical outcome of these removals therefore raise serious questions about the adequacy of the explanation offered. Regardless of the terminology used, the practical effect has been a substantial reduction in access to entire bodies of scholarship—an outcome that cannot reasonably be characterized as neutral or merely procedural. Framing such results as routine risks substituting administrative language for meaningful transparency and accountability, particularly when the materials removed are closely associated with fields that have recently been discontinued at New College.

Whatever the intent, the outcome is clear: access to established fields of scholarship has been materially diminished in ways that are neither incidental nor easily reversed. 

I don't ever see this happening at UT-Austin. I certainly hope I am correct.

Reference

American Library Association. (2018). Selection & reconsideration policy toolkit for public, school, & academic libraries. https://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicytoolkit/

Statement on the Removal of Books and Library Materials

Post Date and Author:
August 14, 2024 - by New College Communications
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The New College Library is following its longstanding annual procedures for weeding its collection, which involves the removal of materials that are old, damaged, or otherwise no longer serving the needs of the College. This process is carried out by professional Librarians trained to assess the collection. A library needs to regularly review and renew its collection to ensure its materials are meeting the current needs of students and faculty. The images seen online of a dumpster of library materials is related to the standard weeding process. Chapter 273 of Florida statutes precludes New College from selling, donating or transferring these materials, which were purchased with state funds. Deselected materials are discarded, through a recycling process when possible.

Separate from the New College library weeding its collection, a number of books associated with the discontinued Gender Studies program were removed from a room in Hamilton Center that is being repurposed. These books came from a number of sources, primarily donations over a number of years. Again, Gender Studies has been discontinued as an area of concentration at New College, and the books are not part of any official college collection or inventory. When the books were not claimed for pickup from the room, they were moved to a book drop location by the library where they were later claimed by individuals planning to donate the books locally.

Book banning totally needs to become the bad policy that it is. Most parents—and teachers and administrators—oppose schools becoming battlegrounds in our current culture war against books—a war characterized by shrill, exaggerated expressions of the books children are exposed to in schools.

I agree with author E. J. Dionne, Jr., that it should not at all be the case that the most upset parent can determine either a school's library holdings or what kids read in school, suggesting the need for parents and communities to step up to the plate and challenge this nonsense. Here are the most concerning observations Dionne offers:

A report by the freedom of expression group PEN America found 1,586 instances of individual books being banned between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, affecting 1,145 unique book titles. In September, the American Library Association reported that there would be more challenges to books in 2022 than there were in 2021, which was a record year.

For more information, do check out PEN America's report titled, "Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights (April 2022). 

Clearly, bans against books and the teaching of controversial topics—under the auspices of the disingenuous "anti-CRT" instruction agenda, are "red meat" issues that don't square with most parents and youth who are in the majority of those seeking a truthful and fair rendering of society and our nation's history. 

If you need Texas data on this, check out the Butt Foundation report titled, Connected Through Our Schools). If these folks decrying alleged indoctrination via "porn" that's getting taught in our schools really cared about public education, they'd be pushing for funding it and stemming the teacher turnover crisis. Instead, they opt for engaging in a contrived culture war that is cynical and damaging of the the trust that should emanate from the hard work and good faith efforts of our teachers, administrators, and librarians.

-Angela Valenzuela

#EyesWideOpen

Book banning is bad policy. Let’s make it bad politics.

by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post, December 18, 2022

Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses in Salt Lake City on Dec. 16, 2021, with books that have been the subject of complaints from parents. (Rick Bowmer/AP)

There was a time when the term “Banned in Boston” was one of the best things that could happen to a book, a play or a movie. From roughly the 1880s to the mid-20th century, a censoriousness rooted in the city’s Puritan past supported especially aggressive laws aimed at suppressing material seen as salacious or dangerous. For many, the label was a guarantee that whatever was banned must have been, well, interesting.