By Juliana Vasquez | Staff Writer
To be censored is to be removed from lesson plans, from places, from ideas. Censorship is on the rise in American media and education, resulting in the removal of professors and journalists who refuse to adhere to the rules imposed on them.
Dr. James Kendrick, the interim department chair of journalism and professor of film and digital media, said censorship is related to who’s in power and how much power they have.
“When you have powerful actors who are trying to keep certain ideas out of circulation … by simply trying to eliminate them from the marketplace of ideas, that’s when you’re getting into the realm of censorship,” Kendrick said.
Censorship doesn’t solely exist in the realm of politics, Kendrick said. Social media platforms and the algorithms that run them also contribute to a suppression of ideas within society.
“They have really more power than a lot of governments to suppress information if they want to,” Kendrick said.
Social media algorithms are beginning to function as a new form of digital censorship, Kendrick said, with algorithms lacking an obvious footprint that censorship occurred in the first place.
“The average user goes on social media and starts scrolling and might not think about why they’re seeing, what they’re seeing, but it’s very purposeful,” Kendrick said. “They don’t even know what they’re not seeing or why they’re saying what they are saying.”
Within the collegiate classroom, educational censorship denies students the opportunity to encounter new ideas and to critically reflect on their opinions when faced with a topic they may disagree with. Kendrick said educational censorship has become more common as individuals confuse the concepts of promoting and presenting an idea.
Although this does happen sometimes, Kendrick said removing controversial topics from the classroom robs the exchange of ideas of its vitality.
“A vibrant, thriving classroom is one built on an exchange of ideas in a system defined by mutual respect between the professor and all the students,” Kendrick said.
Book bans and the push to eliminate gender ideology courses and education from classrooms have been making headlines over the last few months, following an A&M professor’s removal after mentioning gender ideology in her children’s literature course, as stated in a Texas Tribune article from September.
Although some ideas are indefensible, Kendrick said they are still worthy of discussion and critical analysis.
“If you just automatically say we can’t talk about that issue at all, that’s limiting education,” Kendrick said.
Irena Nvota, a first-year Truett Seminary student and international student from Serbia, said censorship harms students’ critical thinking, especially in defending their opinions and ideas.
“We should get to know the other side before we criticize it and learn to be more grounded in what we are defending,” Nvota said.
Ultimately, Kendrick said picking sides before examining the nuanced ideas behind the discussion keeps students from strengthening their own arguments and opinions.
“Everybody is so ready to take up sides,” Kendrick said. “It makes it very hard to find common ground, and I think that’s where a lot of censorship ends up taking place.”
