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Tuesday, September 8, 2026

PEN America Puts a Fox in the Hen House: Philomena Polefrone, Gramsci, and the 'Freedom to Read'

Philomena Polefrone
photo credit Publishers Weekly
Philomena Polefrone was recently named Senior Manager of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, according to a July 2026 interview in Publishers Weekly. In that role he oversees research on book bans and educational censorship in K-12 schools and public libraries, helps produce PEN America’s reports on the subject, and works to raise public awareness and mobilize opposition to what the organization terms censorship.¹

Polefrone previously served as Associate Director of the American Booksellers Association’s American Booksellers for Free Expression initiative. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Columbia University, where he taught literature, writing, and political philosophy. Although PEN America’s staff page and Publishers Weekly use she/her pronouns, the biological reality is that Polefrone is male.²

In the Publishers Weekly interview, Polefrone cited the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci to describe his approach to the work: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” He immediately added: “It’s impossible to ignore how many norms have been shattered, and it feels so much worse to do nothing than to do something.”³

That combination is revealing. Gramsci, a founding figure of the Italian Communist Party, developed the concept of cultural hegemony—the idea that lasting political change requires transforming cultural institutions and the common sense of society, not merely seizing state power. The remark about shattered norms also aligns with a well-documented affinity of Karl Marx himself. Marx’s favorite line from literature, according to multiple accounts, was from Goethe’s Faust (spoken by Mephistopheles): “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” Friends reported that Marx would recite or chant the phrase.⁴


As one critic recently illustrated with a cartoon of a child stomping on a sandcastle while shouting “Stop having a better sandcastle than me,” labeled simply “Socialism,” the impulse to level what already exists is not incidental to this tradition—it is central.⁵


PEN America has been active in litigation and advocacy surrounding school library materials in Escambia County, Florida. The organization is a plaintiff (alongside Penguin Random House, authors, and parents) in a broader federal lawsuit challenging the county’s removal or restriction of numerous books. Separately, the authors of the children’s picture book And Tango Makes Three—which depicts two male penguins raising a chick—sued Escambia County after the school board removed the title. A federal district judge ruled in the school board’s favor in 2025; the authors have appealed. PEN America has publicly supported efforts to restore access to such titles.⁶

Independent journalist and psychologist Dr. Karlyn Borysenko has spent years documenting how far-left and Marxist activists treat libraries, schools, and the “freedom to read” narrative as strategic terrain. Through undercover work at socialist conferences and analysis of primary sources, she has shown how activists discuss using book challenges as an organizing tool, how libraries are framed as sites for socialist work, and how gender ideology functions within a broader project of cultural transformation aimed at children.⁷

While at the American Booksellers Association, Polefrone authored The ABA Right to Read Handbook: Fighting Book Bans and Why It Matters (2024), a practical guide for organizing against book challenges and removals in schools and libraries. The handbook and related ABA materials position resistance to such challenges as essential free-expression work and feature voices from advocacy groups active on these issues.⁸

James Lindsay has argued at length that gender ideology initiatives aimed at young children, including Drag Queen Story Hour, function as tools of Queer Theory intended to reshape children’s understanding of s[*]x and norms. He points to academic literature that openly describes these programs as a means of “bringing queer ways of knowing and being into the education of young children.” In that light, elevating a biological male who identifies as a woman to a senior position at PEN America overseeing school and library materials looks, to many parents, like placing a fox in the hen house.⁹

Parents and local school boards that seek age-appropriate standards for materials available to children now face an advocacy apparatus that frames many such efforts as illegitimate censorship. Whether this leadership choice will ultimately serve the interests of children, or instead intensify institutional pressure to keep contested ideological material on school shelves, remains an open and consequential question.

Endnotes

  1. Claire Kirch, “Defending the Literary Ecosystem: PW Talks with Philomena Polefrone,” Publishers Weekly, July 29, 2026. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/100923-protecting-the-literary-ecosystem-pw-talks-to-philomena-polefrone.html
  2. PEN America staff profile for Philomena Polefrone. https://pen.org/profile/philomena-polefrone-2/ (Official materials use she/her pronouns.)
  3. Same Publishers Weekly interview as Endnote 1. Exact quotation: “It’s impossible to ignore how many norms have been shattered...”
  4. Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration (TAN Books). https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Karl-Marx-Communisms-Infiltration/dp/1505114446 Reporting on Marx’s favorite line from Goethe’s Faust (“Everything that exists deserves to perish”) appears in the book and related interviews.
  5. James Lindsay (@ConceptualJames), X post, August 7, 2026: cartoon of a child stomping a sandcastle with the caption “Fig 12.7 – Socialism.” https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/2085565331620139018
  6. Coverage of Escambia County litigation, including the And Tango Makes Three case (Parnell v. School Board of Escambia County) and the broader PEN America / Penguin Random House suit. See, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/books/and-tango-makes-three-escambia-county.html
  7. Work of Dr. Karlyn Borysenko (Decode The Left / Red Menace Press), including undercover recordings from socialist conferences, analysis of Marxist librarians, and documentation of Queer Marxism. Main sites: https://decodetheleft.com/ https://karlyn.substack.com/
  8. Philomena Polefrone, The ABA Right to Read Handbook: Fighting Book Bans and Why It Matters (American Booksellers Association, 2024). See also the ABA Right to Read Toolkit: https://www.bookweb.org/aba-right-read-toolkit https://www.bookweb.org/right-read-handbook
  9. James Lindsay, “Groomer Schools 4: Drag Queen Story Hour,” New Discourses, June 27, 2022. https://newdiscourses.com/2022/06/groomer-schools-4-drag-queen-story-hour/ See also Harper Keenan and Lil Miss Hot Mess, “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood,” Curriculum Inquiry 50 (2020): 440–461. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03626784.2020.1864621

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Wednesday, September 2, 2026

A New Way ALA Misleads Parents: The National Trainer Who Wrote as the Local Director

Peter Bromberg:
EveryLibrary Board of Directors
Director of the SCLSNJ
This is another method by which the American Library Association (ALA) and its political partner EveryLibrary mislead parents and elected officials. It is not a false job title. It is a national advocacy officer, trained to switch language by audience, writing as if he were only the county library director. Further, he uses his own technique to manipulate the public in an effort to excuse local librarians for promoting Chicago ALA's own political goals that harm children.

On Sept. 1, 2026, New Jersey Hills published an opinion column by Peter Bromberg, identified only as director of the Somerset County Library System of New Jersey (SCLSNJ). The piece is titled “‘Liberty for All:’ Public Libraries and the Promise of America.” It quotes Ronald Reagan and James Madison. It calls libraries “strong supporters of parents and families.” It says libraries “curate age-appropriate zones and displays.” It tells readers that if a title offends, they are “free to reach for something else.”1

That is the local byline. It is not the whole record.

Bromberg became SCLSNJ director on Aug. 1, 2025. For the four years immediately before that he was Associate Director of EveryLibrary, the national 501(c)(4) that organizes against book challenges and trains library boards in political messaging. On May 30, 2025, announcing the Somerset job, he wrote that he looked forward to “continued service on the EveryLibrary Board of Directors.” EveryLibrary’s board page still lists him. His own résumé lists the associate-director post as May 2021–June 2025 and the board seat as 2014–present. When SCLSNJ hired him, MyCentralJersey reported the EveryLibrary job. The system’s official staff bio does not. Neither did the column.2

EveryLibrary is not a book club. It is the national political-action shop for libraries. Its companion 501(c)(3), the EveryLibrary Institute, publishes training for the same fight. Bromberg was the named presenter for the Institute’s webinar “Advocacy in a Polarized World,” that teaches Arnold Kling’s Three Languages of Politics and how to “intentionally use language” across the spectrum. In 2021 he gave the Utah Library Association the talk “Advocating Effectively Across the Political Spectrum.” In September 2023 Niche Academy listed him, then still with EveryLibrary, on a webinar that walked the same framework and a “27-9-3” message formula: 27 words, 9 seconds, three points, mapped to the audience.3

The worksheet for that method is not a rumor. A 2023 EveryLibrary Institute handout, Library Board Policy and Messaging Playbook, includes a page headed “The Three Languages of Politics,” filed under “Intellectual Freedom and Book Challenges.” The page tells staff that progressives, libertarians, and conservatives each have a default moral language, then gives the assignment:

  • Progressives: frame the library in “equity, social justice, a leveling of the playing field… and equal treatment for all.”
  • Libertarians: frame it in “liberty, self-determination, and support for those that are motivated to help themselves.”
  • Conservatives: frame it in “preservation of tradition, local community history, help with assimilating new arrivals, and traditional American values.”4

A related EveryLibrary presentation the same spring supplied fill-in sentences for the conservative ear: the Constitution, the First Amendment, Freedom of Religion, the Founding Fathers, and “We don’t want to chip away at the Constitution.” Another line: “We should never usurp the role of parents.”5

Read the Somerset column against that page. Bromberg did not write in the progressive dialect. He wrote in the other two.

  • “Freedom. Liberty. Justice. For all.”
  • “Self-determination, intellectual freedom, and liberty for all.”
  • “Forge our own destinies without government overreach.”
  • USA250. Reagan. Carnegie. Roosevelt. Madison.
  • America versus “authoritarian regimes where state officials strictly dictate what citizens read, think, and believe.”
  • “Strong supporters of parents and families.”
  • “The parent’s role to set and enforce boundaries.”
  • “Family values.”
  • If a book offends, “we are free to reach for something else.”

That is the conservative and libertarian tip list, aimed at a Somerset Hills paper, in the same week the same paper group was covering a Pride-program petition and a local official urging towns to question library programs.6

The column never quotes the rule the script is built to protect.

Article V of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights says a person’s right to use a library “should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” ALA’s official interpretation, “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors,” is plainer: the right to use a library means “free access to all services, materials, and facilities and unrestricted use of everything the library offers.” Restrictions based solely on age, apparent maturity, educational level, or legal status “violate Article V.” ALA “opposes any efforts to restrict access based on age.”7

A children’s room is furniture. Under that interpretation it is not a lock. “Age-appropriate zones and displays” is what the playbook would call conservative language. “Unrestricted use of everything the library offers” is the written professional rule. Only one of those sentences appeared in the newspaper.

Parents and elected officials are the intended audience for the first sentence. They are not told about the second. They are also not told that the author spent four years as the national group’s associate director, remains on its board, and taught librarians how to switch dialects by audience so the access policy still wins.

Using different words for different listeners is ordinary rhetoric. Hospitals do it. Campaigns do it. The problem is the combination: a national advocacy officer, writing as a local director, in a live materials fight, in the dialect his shop published for conservatives, while leaving the shop and the age rule off the page.

The authorities the column skipped are the ones that actually speak to minors. In United States v. American Library Association (2003), Justice Kennedy wrote that “the interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling, as all Members of the Court appear to agree.” President Eisenhower, at Dartmouth in 1953, told students not to join the book burners, then added the clause library essays usually drop and ALA's own 2025 movie "The Librarians" actually dropped: use the library “as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.”8

Madison on knowledge is not an answer to age. The playbook does not ask directors to answer age. It asks them to talk liberty and family until the question of age goes away.

Somerset County’s Library Commission sets policy for SCLSNJ. It can ask its director, in public, three questions that do not require a theory of anyone’s soul:

  1. Does SCLSNJ adopt ALA’s Library Bill of Rights and the Minors interpretation as collection policy?
  2. If a parent asks that a child’s card not check out adult or s[*]xually explicit titles, will the system honor that limit?
  3. Why did a column on “liberty for all,” published during a local program fight, omit the author’s EveryLibrary board seat and the Institute’s published conservative-language tips?

Those are records questions. The playbook page, the résumé, the LinkedIn post, and the byline are already public. The only thing missing from the newspaper was the second half of the sentence.

Parents who only read the byline were not given the shop, the script, or the age rule. That omission is the method. 

So this is a new way ALA misleads parents and politicians: 1) the national trainer who wrote as the local director to 2) attempt to manipulate local people into affirming Chicago ALA’s anything-goes for children policies, 3) using the very means by which he trains people to manipulate others.


The Three Languages of Politics


Notes:

1. Peter Bromberg, “‘Liberty for All:’ Public Libraries and the Promise of America,” New Jersey Hills / Bernardsville News, Sept. 1, 2026, https://www.newjerseyhills.com/bernardsville_news/opinion/columns/liberty-for-all-public-libraries-and-the-promise-of-america/article_0cc5e4e4-ff48-44d3-a095-fbf5befe4dc5.html.

2. Somerset County Library System of New Jersey, “Peter J. Bromberg,” staff biography, https://sclsnj.org/about-us/staff/peter-bromberg; Peter Bromberg, résumé, https://peterbromberg.com/resume/; Peter Bromberg, LinkedIn post, May 30, 2025, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peterjbromberg_after-nearly-4-years-at-everylibrary-i-activity-7334307222258143233-Vt7C; EveryLibrary, “Board of Directors,” https://www.everylibrary.org/board-directors; Cheryl Makin, “Somerset County Library System has a new director,” MyCentralJersey.com, June 30, 2025, https://www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/local/2025/06/30/somerset-county-library-system-has-a-new-director/84259228007/.

3. EveryLibrary Institute, “FREE WEBINAR: Advocacy in a polarized world,” presenter Peter Bromberg, Associate Director, EveryLibrary, https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/advocacyinpolarizedworld; Peter Bromberg, “Advocating Effectively Across the Political Spectrum,” Utah Library Association Annual Conference, May 21, 2021; Peter Bromberg, “Future-Proofing the Library,” Niche Academy webinar, Sept. 6, 2023, https://www.nicheacademy.com/hubfs/Future-Proof%20Your%20Library%20(Niche%202023)%20(1).pdf. Bromberg’s résumé also lists the NJLA Public Policy Forum keynote “Libraries are Political (And So Can You!),” Livingston, N.J., Nov. 14, 2025.

4. EveryLibrary Institute, Library Board Policy and Messaging Playbook (file dated April 1, 2023), p. 4, “The Three Languages of Politics,” circulating as https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hvATAuYlYrTv7rHfEDNr7bz2qb8BEWjB/view. Parallel text appears in “Real World Policy and Messaging,” June 2023, Wisconsin Public Library Consortium packet, https://www.wplc.org/files/5a115d098/Real-world-policy-and-messaging-June-2023.pdf. Arnold Kling, The Three Languages of Politics (Cato Institute).

5. John Chrastka, EveryLibrary, “Answering Censorship Challenges: EveryLibrary’s Fight for the First Initiative,” Towson University, April 27, 2023, https://towson.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=71758347 (conservative sample: Constitution, Founding Fathers, “We don’t want to chip away at the Constitution”; “We should never usurp the role of parents”).

6. New Jersey Hills package teaser published with the Bromberg column: “Pride v. Prejudice? Petition to Keep County Library Branch Starts as Sweeney Urges Other Towns to Question Programs.” Peapack-Gladstone is a SCLSNJ member community.

7. American Library Association, Library Bill of Rights, Art. V, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill (“age” included 1967; reaffirmed 1996); ALA, “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights,” https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/minors.

8. United States v. American Library Ass’n, 539 U.S. 194, 215 (2003) (Kennedy, J., concurring); Dwight D. Eisenhower, commencement address, Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953.



Opinion for Publication Submitted to Editor September 1, 2026:

New Jersey Hills:

Peter Bromberg’s Sept. 1 column, “‘Liberty for All:’ Public Libraries and the Promise of America,” identifies him only as director of the Somerset County Library System. That title is true. It is not the whole identification.

From May 2021 until June 2025, Mr. Bromberg was Associate Director of EveryLibrary, the national 501(c)(4) that organizes against book challenges and trains library boards in political messaging. On May 30, 2025, announcing the Somerset job, he wrote that he looked forward to “continued service on the EveryLibrary Board of Directors.” EveryLibrary’s board page still lists him. His résumé lists that board seat from 2014 to the present. MyCentralJersey reported the EveryLibrary post when he was hired. The system’s staff biography does not mention it. Neither did the column.

EveryLibrary Institute published the method. A 2023 handout, Library Board Policy and Messaging Playbook, includes a page headed “The Three Languages of Politics,” filed under "Intellectual Freedom and Book Challenges.” It tells staff that progressives, libertarians, and conservatives each have a default language, then assigns the frame:

Progressives: “equity, social justice, a leveling of the playing field… and equal treatment for all.”  
Libertarians: “liberty, self-determination, and support for those that are motivated to help themselves.”  
Conservatives: “preservation of tradition, local community history, help with assimilating new arrivals, and traditional American values.”

A related EveryLibrary presentation the same year supplied conservative sample copy: the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, Freedom of Religion, and “We don’t want to chip away at the Constitution.” Another line: “We should never usurp the role of parents.”

Mr. Bromberg’s column is written in the conservative and libertarian dialects. Reagan. Madison. The Constitution versus “authoritarian regimes.” “Freedom. Liberty. Justice. For all.” “Self-determination.” “Strong supporters of parents and families.” “Family values.” If a title offends, “we are free to reach for something else.” It is not written in the progressive dialect. It was published as the same paper group covered a petition and a local official urging towns to question library programs.

The column never quotes the rule that script is written to protect. Article V of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights says a person’s right to use a library “should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” ALA’s official interpretation, “Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors,” states that this right means “free access to all services, materials, and facilities and unrestricted use of everything the library offers,” and that limits based solely on age, apparent maturity, or legal status “violate Article V.” A children’s room is furniture. Under that interpretation it is not a lock.

“Age-appropriate zones and displays” is what the playbook would call language for a conservative paper. “Unrestricted use of everything the library offers” is the professional text. Only the first sentence ran.

Using different words for different listeners is ordinary rhetoric. The problem is the combination: a national advocacy officer, writing as a local director, during a local materials fight, in the dialect his shop published for conservatives, while leaving the shop and the age rule off the page.

The authorities that actually address minors were also left off. In United States v. American Library Association (2003), Justice Kennedy wrote that “the interest in protecting young library users from material inappropriate for minors is legitimate, and even compelling, as all Members of the Court appear to agree.” President Eisenhower, at Dartmouth in 1953, warned against book burners then added the clause usually dropped: use the library “as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency.”

The Somerset County Library Commission sets policy. It can ask, in public, whether SCLSNJ adopts the ALA Minors interpretation; whether a parent may limit a child’s card; and why an EveryLibrary board seat was omitted from a column on “liberty for all.” Those are records questions. The playbook page, the résumé, and the byline are already public.

Dan Kleinman  
Chatham, N.J.


NOTE ADDED 2 SEPTEMBER 2026:

Tonight I spoke at the commission meeting wherein Peter Bromberg is a member. He was there. So I confronted ALA head on. You see, people, it's not that hard. I've done it before. Don't be intimidated by them.

Here is what I said, along with other graphics showing the extent of the problem. It's my own recording as the commission makes no recordings.


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URL of this page: 

safelibraries.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-new-way-ala-misleads-parents.html

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