The Hamline incident shows how libraries are on not quiet safe places. They are places where ideas boil over, though patrons should not be allowed to. As Richard Ovenden the Oxford librarian,  said,

The Hamline incident and the current spate of book banning in the US, show how libraries are on the front line of a war defending knowledge from attack. The American Library Association reported that in 2021-2022 there were more than 2,500 book bans in a 138 different school districts and libraries spread across 32 states covering 4 million peoples. The highest concentrations were to be found in Texas and Florida, states where the dominant flavor of politics is tea. Many of the contested authors seem so uncontroversial that their presence on these lists is a shock. Khaled Husseini’s The Kite Runner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Isn’t the US Constitution meant to protect freedom of speech? Apparently not.

Just today [September 23, 2024] I learned that book bannings have tripled in the past year!

To my mind, when I see outstanding books like these on a banning list, I cannot help but think it is hard evidence that the source of the bans is profound ignorance. Ovenden is absolutely right, this is a war on knowledge. A war waged by the ignorant that cannot be tolerated.