“Protected Identity Harm” sounds like revealing that Clark Kent is Superman. At Stanford, it means anything that offends somebody. An associate dean and another person filed a report of “Protected Identity Harm,” the harmful incident being a Snapchat picture of a student reading Mein Kampf. In making their complaint, they urged students to turn in others whom they see engaging in similar “harm.”

It’s not clear whether the supposed harm came from reading the book or from showing it being read on a social media site. Fortunately, Stanford did not punish anyone. A Stanford spokesperson said, “At the request of the student organization, we have been engaged in conversation with a number of students, seeking to provide support and foster communication. However, there has been no requirement that any student meet with or report to a university official to discuss the matter.” It could have been worse, but the university’s response still was not good. It should have just told the complainers to get a life and not given any of them “support.” The biggest share of the blame goes to the dean who decided it was fun to make life a little more unpleasant for a student.

Some books express horrible ideas. They include Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, Malleus Maleficarum, and some parts of the Bible. If no one reads them to find out what they say, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what motivated them or why they were so influential. Big Brother’s third tenet in 1984 is “Ignorance is Strength.” Keep people from hearing wrongthink, and they won’t have wrong thoughts. But that kind of “protection” is useless for the protected, and it’s a weapon for those in power.

Stigmatizing and reporting the reading of “bad” books can have several bad consequences.

• It discourages readers from understanding how their authors thought and what led to their thinking it. Without that understanding, it’s harder to prevent a recurrence.
• It gives supporters of a book’s ideas an opening to say, “It really isn’t so horrible.” They can selectively quote or paraphrase its text to make it sound more appealing, and people who don’t dare to read it can’t refute them.
• It makes the books sound more attractive. The forbidden is always tempting.
• Once stigmatization of reading is accepted, powerful people can use it against any book they find troublesome. If you don’t read it, how do you know if the accusations are true? The Catholic Church maintained an Index of Prohibited Books for centuries, instructing believers not to read Pascal’s Pensées, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, and many other works.

Book-banning is harmful, whether the campaign is directed at the publisher, the seller, or the reader. Ignorance is indeed strength — for those who keep others in the dark.