Respect’s winter 2025 issue features articles on antisemitism, hate crimes and threats to librarians. A PDF of the Respect’s winter 2025 edition can be downloaded or individual articles can be read and printed from Respect’s blog, The Rundown.
Any questions, contact the editor of Respect, Jodi L. Miller. She can be reached via email at jmiller@njsbf.org.
Here are the headlines from the Winter 2025 Edition:
Librarians Face a New Chapter on Book Banning
Could school librarians face jail time for the books they choose to include in your library?
The late Judith Krug, a former executive director of the American Library Association who co-founded Banned Books Week in 1982, said in interviews, “Librarians are trained as librarians; we have absolutely no training or expertise in being censors. Our jobs are to provide all the ammunition we possibly can to enable a child to expand his horizons. The right of any individual to read is an absolute necessity in a democratic society.” READ MORE
Defining Antisemitism in the Garden State
In general, hate crimes are on the rise in the United States. Of the 11,862 reported hate crimes in 2023, 1,832 were due to antisemitism, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2023 Hate Crime Statistics Report. That is a 63% increase over 2022 numbers. READ MORE
Federal Hate Crime Law Brings First Conviction
In February 2024, U.S. prosecutors won their first case under a federal hate crime statute that was expanded in October 2009 to encompass gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability. A South Carolina jury convicted Daqua Lameek Ritter of a hate crime for the August 2019 murder of Dime Doe, a Black transgender woman. READ MORE
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