Julianne Moore's children’s book “Freckleface Strawberry,” alongside many others, has been indefinitely suspended from schools operated by the Department of Defense. It is being reviewed for DEI content and may or not return.

“It is a great shock for me to learn that my first book, ‘Freckleface Strawberry,’ has been banned,” Moore wrote. “‘Freckleface Strawberry’ is a semi-autobiographical story about a seven year old girl who dislikes her freckles but eventually learns to live with them when she realizes that she is different ‘just like everybody else.’ It is a book I wrote for my children and for other kids to remind them that we all struggle, but are united by our humanity and our community.”

As many have argued, this book is not be technically “banned” in the strict sense. But this is nonetheless an attack on speech.

Here's why:

When books are removed, even temporarily, it has a chilling effect on what authors can put into books, fearing bans or reviews based on a criteria that far from everyone agrees on—including even those who support the current administration.

Since this isn’t an issue of age inappropriate content being targeted (eg. sexual content or excessive violence), this is actually viewpoint discrimination and limits the diversity of ideas available to students/young minds. As a student, I’ve read many books, a number of which have been thought of as controversial, some I might not even agree with myself, but I had the opportunity to read and think for myself.

It sets a precedent for either party to take books off the shelves based on their own ideological beliefs. And yes, this was done by the other party as well. I am not comfortable with this done by either party. If you’re comfortable with this move now, are you comfortable with the Dems doing the same?

Obviously someone makes a choice on the books that are made available to students, but it would make more sense for this to be a diverse (in terms of thought) panel.

At the very least, if they were going to pull books, they could have reviewed them first and then decided on what stays and what goes.