>>Apparently various education groups are advocating for dropping Shakespeare from school/university curriculums as his work “is full of misogyny, racism, homophobia, class discrimination, anti-Semitism”. I'm sure Chaucer and Dickens must be on the firing line. Homer and the Iliad also looking to be cancelled amongst many more. no doubt.
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>Back in the 70's and 80's, a common theme (with a certain level of justification) was that the religious right wanted certain books out of the public school system....titles like Catcher in the Rye, some of Vonnegut's books, some of Faulkner's books (which for me would have been OK, Faulkner was the most boring author I've ever read).
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I am generally opposed to censorship in all forms, be it by governments, religions, book publishers or giant corporations. I think that everyone who favors censorship of other's ideas should realize that in censoring others that you will eventually be robbed of your own right to free speech. Maybe I spent too much time in the military but I believe that Sun Tzu was right when he wrote "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” It applies to equally to intellectual or military battles. How better to "know thy enemy" than to listen to what he says as well as watch what he does?

As for Shakespeare and Faulkner, I took a semester of Shakespeare in college and 2 semesters of American Lit. In the American Lit. classes I got my share of Faulkner. He was a friend of several of the professors and guest speakers (John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, Mary Flannery O'Connor and Robert Penn Warren) several of which may make the "hit list". Rumor was that Faulkner and his friend Howard Hawks were the head of the drinking team. About 8 years after the classes I was talking to one of my former roommates, who was trying to avoid the draft with student deferments, and was working on his PhD in English. He also expressed a not so good opinion of Falkner. Of the group, I think my favorite was Robert Penn Warren.



>But for the most part, the current push for dropping is coming far more from the political left. The tables have turned. And related to that is the wide usage of the term "hate speech". When a feminist like J.K. Rowling gets accused of hate speech because of her views on transgenderism, you know you're in a weird place right now. Somewhere along the line, voicing a different opinion became a form of hate speech.