Censorship across the country is having a negative impact on academic freedom, according to a recent presentation by College of DuPage (COD) sociology professor, Robert Moorehead.
“In 2025, state lawmakers introduced 93 bills censoring higher education in 32 states,” according to the University of Illinois Chicago,These laws prohibit topics such as race, gender, LGBTQ+ identities and United States history.
Moorehead’s classes mainly focus on areas of race and immigration. He teaches lessons the majority of his students are not aware of and lessons on American history not taught in certain areas of North America, he said. Aware of censorship continuing to be a prominent issue, Moorehead said it was time to discuss it.
“I wanted to wait to see what was in the news [and] what would be issues that students might be aware of,” he said. “There kept being so many stories on the limits on teaching at so many universities and particularly limits in sociology classes.”
In the presentation, academic freedom was explained as the student’s right to learn what they want without censorship. Laws across the country require faculty to post syllabi online for the public to review and critique, avoid explicit discussions, encourage students to come to their own conclusions and show intellectual diversity.
These laws may seem ideal on paper, Moorehead said, but they are for parents and students to control what schools are teaching. If a parent does not approve of their child’s class syllabus, they may attempt to have the class be removed.
Explicit discussions include topics of race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality and global inequality. By encouraging “students to make their own conclusions,” Moorehead said they are allowed to deny historical facts.
Though censorship is uncommon in Illinois, Moorhead has noticed tactics parents here use to censor.
“Even in Illinois, there have been issues with parents wanting to get books out of the school library or change the books teachers are using in kids’ classes,” he said. “Whether the books have gay characters, for example, and whether parents want those books.”
Sociology as a subject is the study of human society, social relationships and group behavior. The class itself informs students of different societies and gives them a better understanding of how our society works. Sociology is about how interruption and understanding of the world around us interacts with society.
Moorehead gives each of his students a simple goal: by the end of the semester, change how you see the social world after learning about it. Not in any particular way, but how the individual student experiences it.
According to the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), international education and foreign language studies are being challenged by President Donald Trump’s administration- requesting to cut all funding. Putting behavioral science subjects, like sociology, at risk of being taken out of schools, unable to pay professors and not counting toward general education. This would also include anthropology, psychology and economics, to list a few.
With this in mind, Moorehead explained how conservatives believe behavioral sciences are unsafe to be taught in schools because students cannot think critically. Therefore, parents and school boards censor these classes.
Moorehead proposed a solution to this problem.
“Advocate for yourselves,” he said. “You’re adults, right? I think students [should] advocate for themselves and their fellow students [to] show that you can think for yourselves. You’re really smart people. You’re here to learn. This idea that you’re going to get brainwashed and indoctrinated by your professors assumes that you can’t think for yourself. I really think that’s very insulting to students.”
At COD, students and faculty do not have an extensive history of being educationally censored. This is uncommon compared to other, more conservative, areas of the nation. According to National Public Radio (NPR), restricting access to books, certain curricula and discussions regarding race, gender and social issues exist in several states.
Moorehead said students have the option to take initiative for other schools that have less of a say in their educational freedoms. He made suggestions for how students can support other students willing to learn.
“[Schools] need support from [the] outside,” Moorehead said. “Writing letters to college presidents, to boards of trustees, to newspapers, to elected officials, [and by] calling elected officials’ offices [helps].”
To help fight against censorship for your own community or another, the American Library Association (ALA) suggests following news and media in your community, speaking and attending board meetings, engaging respectfully with government officials, educating people on censorship, writing letters to local newspapers and joining organizations.
