‘They’re Criminalizing Teachers and Librarians’: Judy Blume Slams Ron DeSantis’ Education Censorship

Judy Blume skewered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his efforts to dictate the parameters of public education in the state, telling a crowd at Variety’s Power of Women event, “Teachers are under fire, librarians are threatened. They are criminalizing teachers and librarians. It’s not just that they’re threatening their jobs. They’re threatening them.”

Over the past several months, DeSantis (known by some as “Meatball Ron”) has touted a law that forbids any discussion of sexuality or gender in K-12 schools and is now pursuing a widespread ban on the teaching of topics related to Critical Race Theory. During her speech, Tuesday, April 4, Blume — who lives in Key West, Florida — laid into DeSantis and his efforts to, as she put it, “control everything, starting with what kids can think, what they can know, what they can question, what they can learn, and now even what they can talk about.”

She added, “We have a legislator who’s trying to push through a bill preventing girls in elementary school from talking about periods… Good luck there.”

Blume linked these current attacks on public education to the wave of censorship she experienced first-hand, especially in the Eighties. While her classic book about puberty, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, was published in 1970, Blume remembered how the “censors crawled out of the woodwork overnight” following the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. 

“With me, it was sexuality, and specifically puberty – which to some people was a very dirty word,” Blume said, adding that these were topics censors desperately wanted to avoid discussing. Still, the scrutiny and attacks were frightening.

“I felt alone. I felt scared. I mean, this was America, right? I thought we were a country who celebrated our intellectual freedom?” Blume said. She then gave credit to the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), which helped her and “readers, teachers, librarians, parents, students, everyone who cared about the freedom to read, to know, to question, to choose, to learn.”

While Blume acknowledged that she would have preferred to end her speech on a “sweet and positive note,” she pointedly stressed: “[T]he reality is, we are right back where we were in the Eighties, except it’s the Eighties on steroids.”

She added: “This time it’s not the moral majority or only the religious right. This time it is coming from our government. Lawmakers, drunk with power, with a need to control everything. Sure, it’s still sexuality, but it’s gender, it’s LGBTQ+, it’s racism, it’s history itself that’s under fire.”