Targeting Books for Removal at U.S. Military Libraries

In the course of looking for resources relating to critical cataloging, I stumbled on a new memorandum from the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, dated May 9th and titled “Reviewing the Department’s Military Educational Institution Library Collections.” The memorandum directs the military schools and academies under the Department of Defense to use a provided list of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to flag any books that are described with those subject headings, with the intent to identify, sequester, and potentially dispose of those books. The intention of this review is to remove educational materials at the schools “promoting divisive concepts and gender ideology [that] are incompatible with the Department’s core mission,” which is “providing the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”

This list of subject headings was created by a “temporary Academic Libraries Committee (ALC), comprised of knowledgeable leaders, educators, and library professionals drawn from across the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Military Departments” who will do the work of reviewing books and potentially removing them because they aren’t aligned with the viewpoint of the Trump presidential administration.

The subject headings listed are: 

• Affirmative Action Programs — Law and Legislation — United States 
• Affirmative Action Programs — United States
• Affirmative Action
• Allyship
• Anti-Racism — United States
• Critical Race Theory
• Discrimination — Law and Legislation — United States
• Diversity in the Workplace — United States
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Gender Affirming Care – United States
• Gender Dysphoria
• Gender Expression
• Gender Identity — United States
• Gender Nonconformity
• Gender Transition
• Transgender Military Personnel — United States
• Transgender People — United States
• Transsexualism — United States
• Transsexuals — United States
• White privilege (Social structure)

As a cataloger, it’s painful to see LCSH used to do this dirty work, to limit rather than expand access. As someone who has worked to increase access to materials relating to underrepresented populations, it’s particularly painful that some of the headings listed are newly established in the last few years. For example, the LCSH Allyship was established in 2023. I personally worked with a group of wonderful MLIS students to revise the subject headings for Gender transition (before 2020, this subject heading was established as Sex change). The subject heading White privilege (Social structure) has a notably long history of being proposed and rejected by the Library of Congress, with attempts being made to establish it in 2011 and 2016 before it was finally accepted in 2022.

Since the 2020 uprisings after the murder of George Floyd, a groundswell of catalogers has invested their time and energy into an often frustrating task—working to improve subject headings. This work is slow, exacting, and unglamorous (even by the standards of definitionally unglamorous cataloging work!), but the catalogers who do it find it worthwhile because we know the provision of accurate, up-to-date, respectful terminology will help library patrons find the information they need. We see it as our responsibility to bring together information about topics that are sensitive or frequently challenged. We take heart in the many stories of people finding books about their own identity on the library shelves, their discoveries facilitated by the careful work of catalogers. (For just one such story, see Alison Bechdel’s searching her college library’s card catalog for Homosexuality in Fun Home.)

Strikingly, the memorandum claims that the committee reviewing the books flagged with these subject headings “will take a viewpoint neutral approach and apply the definitions of ‘discriminatory equity ideology’ and ‘gender ideology’” from Trump’s executive order withdrawing federal recognition for transgender people. Of course, nothing could be less “viewpoint neutral” than investing in the Trump administration’s twisted philosophy of gender essentialism and targeting the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

The memorandum goes on to claim that the committee’s work “uphold[s] the principles of intellectual freedom necessary to educate military leaders ready to fight and win the Nation’s wars.” Librarians, is this your definition of intellectual freedom?