Anke Steineke, Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel U.S. for Penguin Random House (USA), gave a detailed look at the situation in the United States of America and the dramatic speed of the reshaping of the cultural and educational landscape. Citing Pen America’s latest reports she noted how there have been thousands of book bans which are having chilling effect on educators and librarians.
She called this silent censorship, the books that are being quietly removed from libraries and classrooms pre-emptively.
Steineke was able to through the range of actions that PRH and others have led in the states to resist, starting with an in-depth look at the legal challenges they have led, suing several states to push back on unconstitutional State laws and promote freedom to read legislation. This second point was part of their advocacy work where they have also launched a bannedwagon, handing out more than 6,000 banned books and donating over 25,000 to libraries across the country.
Finally, Steinecke looked at the work in developing resources for librarians and educators but also parents and teachers. These resources include around 700 book summaries that give educators and librarians the tools to argue against why these books need to stay in the libraries and the communities.
Next, Sherif Bakr of Al Arabi (Egypt, and member of the IPA’s Freedom to Publish Committee) placed the situation in Egypt in stark contrast noting the absence of infrastructure like well stocked libraries.
Bakr presented a context where the freedom to publish and limits on it are not even really perceived by many publishers who are striving to succeed in an environment where official censorship does not exist but more informal restrictions may apply. These include being unable to have a stand at the book fairs, which can represent a huge revenue loss, even putting a publisher out of business.
Bakr also noted how Arabic language publishers are also trying to cater for a range of countries across the Arab world and have to be aware of how certain passages in books can affect sales in certain States. The range of potential challenges leads many publishers to be overly cautious in their approach, leading to self-censorship.
On the freedom to read however Bakr noted that readers do find ways to access books that are not available, sadly often using pirate sites.
Finally, Jaeho Kang of the Korean Publishers Association (Korea, and member of the IPA’s Freedom to Publish Committee) closed with the dramatic implications of the imposition of Martial Law in Korea in December 2025 (which placed media publications under military law for the first time in 44 years) and the previous regime’s legal attacks against the Korean Publishers Association.
Kang was at pains to point out how the declaration of Martial Law was not sudden but was the accumulation of years of systemic pressure on the Korean publishing industries. These included using funding for events to apply pressure as well legal intimidation of the association and its President.
Kang presented the work of the KPA to resist these attacks and used these experiences to present how they could have done better and how others around the world could work. Kang shared five practical lessons:
- Build institutional memories, document everything. A history of resistance can be used when resisting future attacks.
- Create financial independence so the government cannot use funding as leverage.
- Prepare for legal warfare, lawfare, by creating member-funded legal defence funds that can’t be touched by government, by collecting evidence of patterns of abuse, partnering with constitutional law experts ahead of any crisis, and make legal harassment expensive and time consuming for authorities.
- Form partnerships with media freedom organisations, constitutional rights groups, and other international organisations.
- Finally, be ready to act quickly. Have statements and spokespeople ready for a crisis situation with communication channels that cannot easily be shut down. Speed matters when democracy is under threat.
Kang closed by calling on international publishers to support each other, to share resistance strategies, issue joint statements, noting that international condemnation can matter because it makes authoritarianism costly in terms of international reputation.
And on these points, all of the speakers could agree.
