A school board in Tennessee has removed “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, an award-winning 1986 graphic novel on the Holocaust, from student libraries. Objections to the book include violence, nudity and swearing. Tribune News Service

Maro Siranosian/AFP

In the ever-worsening culture wars, schools have emerged as a battlefront, with fierce arguments raging about the contents of curricula and propriety of particular books. Debating what literature and ideas to teach students is a mark of a healthy democratic society. But coming amid assaults on voting rights, protest rights and respect for dissent, these efforts to repress disfavored ideas and books must be recognized as part of a larger attack on democracy itself.

Since January 2021 more than 150 bills have been introduced in 39 states that would restrict the teaching of certain curricula, mostly on issues of race and gender. Of these bills, more than 103 were introduced since the start of 2022. Twelve have already become law. Roughly two-thirds of the bills target K-12 schools, with the rest focused on higher education, libraries and state agencies. Sixty-two include mandatory punishments for those who violate the bans.

Initially, most of these measures used the misnomer of “critical race theory” in an effort to push back against teachings thought to overemphasize the role of race as the driving force in American history and culture. But more recently introduced restrictions reach beyond any single concept.

South Carolina’s House Bill 4605 seeks to protect students from any material that might cause “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their “race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, heritage, culture, religion, or political belief.” Such language, common to many of these bills, is dangerous. It is impossibly broad, opening the door to eliminating an endless range of works and topics. It also undermines one of the very aims of education, which is to help students move beyond their existing assumptions about the world.

Most book bans target works by and about people of color as well as LGBTQ subjects and storylines. Florida’s Polk County “quarantined” 16 books, including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye,” based on complaints from a group called County Citizens Defending Freedom.

Book bans and curriculum debates in the United States have flared up episodically over time, as rattled communities have sought to pump the brakes on social change in areas including evolutionary science, sexuality and the embrace of ethnic differences. Although some of the arguments being made today — about protecting innocent students from corrupting ideas — echo traditional motives for book banning, the current crusade has a more sinister cast.

The spiking numbers — what the American Library Association has called an “unprecedented volume” of book challenges including more than 155 unique “censorship incidents” between June and November, 2021 — indicate that something organized is afoot. In many cases the new bans are not simply spontaneous initiatives by local citizens. Conservative donors, think tanks and organizers have been drafting and shopping model laws, lobbying legislators, recruiting parent and community activists, and providing playbooks on what to get banned and how.

Holding fast to democracy means holding fast to books, defending the judgment of teachers and librarians, and vigorously upholding the rights to read and learn.

Suzanne Nossel is chief executive of PEN America and author of “Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All.”