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The American Library Association and Banned Books Week Coalition are pleased to announce the theme for Banned Books Week 2025: “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights.” Banned Books Week will take place October 5 – 11, 2025.

With the escalation in attempts to ban books in libraries, schools, and bookstores around the country, George Orwell’s cautionary tale “1984” serves a prescient warning about the dangers of censorship. This year’s theme reminds us that the right to read belongs to all of us, that censorship has no place in contemporary society, and that we must defend our rights.

“The 2025 theme of Banned Books Week serves as a reminder that censorship efforts persist to this day,” ALA President Cindy Hohl said. “We must always come together to stand up for the right to read.”

ALA released the Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024 list and the State of America’s Libraries report. The majority of book censorship attempts now originate from organized movements. Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members, and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries. The 120 titles most frequently targeted for censorship during 2024 are all identified on partisan book rating sites, which provide tools for activists to demand the censorship of library books. 

Banned Books Week launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of book challenges in libraries, schools, and bookstores.

>> Learn more about the 2025 theme
>> Learn more about Banned Books Week

Since its launch on International Youth Day 2020, UNICEF USA’s Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI) has been partnering with cities and counties across the U.S. to ensure children’s voices and rights are at the heart of local governance. Our first cohort includes Boulder (CO), Decatur (GA), Houston (TX), Minneapolis (MN), Prince George’s County (MD), and Alton (IL). As of April 2025, Denver (CO) joined our first post-pilot cohort. We’re proud to share that Houston (2023), Minneapolis (2024), and most recently Decatur (2025) have been officially recognized as the first UNICEF Child Friendly Cities in the United States.

While we aren’t currently accepting applications for formal CFCI partnership (our new cohort has just been selected), we are actively engaging with interested municipalities through our National Learning Community. Over the coming year, we’ll release new resources on child-centered governance and invite participants to webinars and learning exchanges.

Stay connected:

•  Sign up for the Communities for Every Child newsletter for updates on research, advocacy, and opportunities to shape child-friendly communities.
•  Join our CACR LinkedIn Group to collaborate with municipal partners and researchers.

All schools must be a place where students can feel safe and have their identities affirmed in order to thrive. Our students need to know we see them, we hear them, and we support them. This fall, the start of the new school year provides us the opportunity to declare our commitment to students, welcoming them back to the classroom with courage and joy, free from bias, and discrimination.

Inspired by Idaho Educator Sarah Inama’s bravery to keep her “Everyone Is Welcome Here” poster hanging in her classroom, our Everyone is Welcome Here art, sponsored by Advocates for Youth, National Education Association, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Subject To Climate, visibly affirm the commitment of school staff to each students’ right to learn and thrive in a safe and welcoming school – no matter what they look like, where they are from or who they love.

NEA also funds and organizes trainings for NEA members. Request your Racial and Social Training here

>> Get your stickers and posters and show your students Everyone is Welcome Here! 

To support our network of human rights educators, HRE USA provides lesson plans and resources teaching about human rights, through human rights and for human rights.

📚 These lessons and resources are available for free in our Human Rights Education Library and HRE Collections.

💬 HRE USA members also have access to the HRE USA Discussion Forum to share resources, events, and converse with fellow HRE practitioners.

🖇️ If you have time and interest, please consider joining one of  HRE USA’s Action Teams: HRE USA Action Teams and Working Group. We ask interested members to please complete the following HRE USA Leadership Survey 2025. Our Team Chairs will be in touch with you soon.

🛍️ Shop for UN declaration and convention booklets, posters, teaching materials, HRE USA publications, and the Human Rights Game at our shop.

Have HRE news, resources, or events to share?

For Blog posts, which feed the HRE USA Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, please email kristi@hreusa.org with “BLOG” in the subject line. **Please make sure that you include an image as well as the short writeup. If there is a link for further information, you can include this link. Blog examples: News and Updates (hreusa.org)

For Newsletter items, please send agenda items and story information to info@hreusa.org with “NEWSLETTER” in the subject line. **Please send an image and your story write-up with a link by the 15th of each month to be included in the next newsletter. Newsletter examples.

If you would like HRE USA to co-sponsor an upcoming human rights event by sharing with our network, please submit this form.

This year’s toolkit is packed with ready-to-use, SDG skills resources to help you:

• Bring the Global Goals into your teaching in new ways 
• Explore timely topics like global trade, supply chains and peace-building
• Foster peace, empathy, and hope in the classroom

“Systems Bingo!” explores how global trade connects us all – and why it’s crucial to make these systems fair and sustainable for both people and planet. Fast-paced discussion, plus a bit of healthy competition! 

“Be Hope” invites students to imagine a brighter future and share their visions with the world on the Map of Hope, to be hope for others.  

“SDG 16 in Action” demonstrates how peace-building can begin in the classroom, through empathy, fairness and creative collaboration.

>> Access resource

Asha Rangappa is a Yale professor and former FBI agent who appears frequently on national media as a legal and security analyst.

Prior to her current position as Senior Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, Rangappa was Associate Dean at Yale Law School and served as a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations. Rangappa has been a legal and national security analyst for CNN and ABC News, and has also appeared frequently on MSNBC and BBC. She is an editor for Just Security, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project. At Yale, Rangappa teaches courses on national security law, Russian information warfare, and leadership and ethics. She is the author of The Freedom Academy, a bestselling online Substack publication about disinformation and its impact on democracy, and she also co-hosts the legal podcast, It’s Complicated, with Renato Mariotti.

Noting that “Rangappa’s humor and intellect have won her a formidable following,” a recent magazine profile stated, “If you could invent a political commentator with bipartisan credibility, she might look like Asha Rangappa. . . . Rangappa knows from experience how the FBI handles Russian spies and disinformation; add to the mix her professorial skill at explaining complex ideas, and she is ideally positioned to break down the bewildering political events of recent years.”

Sep 18, 2025, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM (CT), The Mauthe Center, 2418 Leon Bond Dr, Green Bay, WI 54311 and Webinar 


This event is free and open to the public. Registration here will reserve your seat until 6:45pm.

>> Learn more and register 
>> The event will also be simulcast as a webinar. To attend virtually, follow this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IGUM7OChR1Gb7aRW435QMA

HRE USA is a coalition of hundreds of members across the country, and we continue to grow daily. We are academics, activists, parents, educators, students, unions, policy makers, social scientists, software engineers, professors, artists, and non-profit organizations united with a common mission: promoting human dignity, justice, and peace by cultivating an expansive, vibrant base of support for human rights education (HRE) within the United States.

There are two ways to join the HRE USA community: as an individual or as an organization.

>> Learn more and become a member today!