The Harvard Library has appointed an Associate University Librarian for Antiracism. The press release announcing the position says that “we are a center for knowledge supporting our faculty and students in pursuing antiracism through their research, teaching, and learning. It also extends to our partnerships and collaborative networks, where we aim to support equitable access to a diversity of content, easy engagement with trustworthy information, and thoughtful preservation for the future.”


The purpose of a large research library such as Harvard’s is to provide information, not to promote or oppose ideas (other than broad ones such as the value of knowledge and truth). Putting librarians into advocacy roles that influence content acquisition is a dangerous path to follow.

If there should be a librarian for antiracism, what other “anti” positions should have librarians promoting them? Socialism is a dangerous and harmful idea; should there be an anti-socialism librarian? Should there be an anti-violence librarian to address the various violent trends in the United States?

An earlier release from Harvard talks about the “anti-racism team,” One of the goals mentioned there is to “organize and develop policies that support the digitization of materials documenting anti-Black racism, including identifying potential candidates for digitization and processing collections to support that digitization.” This suggests the prioritization of materials based on the position they take, with a further narrowing of the focus to one type of racism. That sounds more like the pursuit of an agenda than of research.

A library can’t be neutral on everything. Certain values are inherent in the idea of a library: Making knowledge available and preserving it. Letting people know what is being said today and has been said in the past. Encouraging debate based on the study of facts and ideas. But focusing on “anti” positions, even the most worthy ones, may endanger the pursuit of those goals. A focus on the “anti” too often leads to seeing hints of deviancy everywhere and discouraging questions. I’m reminded of the time Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow publicly blasted a student for a private email exchange that Minow had gotten hold of, which raised uncomfortable questions in the spirit of science. The current climate of ideas in the United States faces two anti-free-speech movements: the Trumpist right and the woke left. Efforts to oppose anything can easily go bad in such a climate.

Documenting racism and other trends in ideas is, of course, important. But the documentation should come through the eyes of an observer, looking for the best information, the most trustworthy analysis, the most thorough research. The people curating the material may (and hopefully do) reject racism, but their goal is to document it, not to take an advocacy position.

An analogy may help. Suppose a position is created to collect materials on Germany’s role in World War II. Creating the position of “World War II German Studies Librarian” would be legitimate. Creating the position of “Anti-Nazi Librarian” would subvert the goal. It’s not that librarians should be indifferent to Nazism; it’s that opposition to it shouldn’t be the defining characteristic of the job. Otherwise there could be pressure to prefer materials which are more vociferous in their denunciation of the Nazis, perhaps to prefer pro-war to anti-war materials, even if they don’t meet as high a standard for accuracy. Even pro-Nazi material is necessary; could anyone be an expert on Nazism without reading Mein Kampf and Germany’s exclusionary laws? Similarly, a thorough understanding of racism requires digging into the work of Francis Galton and the eugenics movement he founded.

Making an “anti” position the primary one can drive people to top one another in anti-ness. This happened with anti-Communism in the 1950s. Legitimate concern with Communist influence led to false and exaggerated charges, culminating in Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt. In the aftermath, Communism gained respectability in some circles, as any statement opposing Communism because suspect by association.

Emphasizing the need to oppose has led to censorship. In the nineteenth century, the Boston Public Library excluded books that presented “false ideas of life.” During World War I, probably America’s worst period for censorship, many public libraries removed “disloyal” and “pro-German” material from their collections. The Chicago Public Library has removed the six controversial Dr. Seuss books from its shelves, though they are being kept for the time being as reference copies. The temptation to censor is strong, and even if the intent at Harvard is only to augment its collections, the risk of preferring party-line adhesion to scholarship is significant.

Activism and scholarship are a dangerous mix, and I don’t expect any good to come from the creation of this position. Rather than improving the state of scholarship, it’s likely to promote materials that express one flavor of “antiracism” while pushing valuable documents aside.

Personal note: I used to work as a software engineer for the Harvard University Libraries. If I were still working there, I wouldn’t have dared to post this. It very likely would have cost me my job. I got hints of this when I was working there, and it’s only grown worse since then. Harvard is not a place that’s conducive to open debate.