CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Emily Knox, a professor of library and information sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Tuesday, Sept 12. The committee is chaired by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.
The hearing “Book Bans: Examining How Censorship Limits Liberty and Literature” is scheduled for 10 a.m. EDT. Knox will testify in person, and the hearing will be livestreamed at https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings.
Knox’s testimony will address the right to intellectual freedom, why people attempt to ban books and the importance of libraries.
Knox’s research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, information ethics and policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. She is the author of “Book Banning in 21st-Century America” and “Foundations of Intellectual Freedom.”
Knox is the board president of the National Coalition Against Censorship and is the editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. She also is a member of the Mapping Information Access research team, an academic research project examining information access and availability in U.S. public schools and libraries.