Education is increasingly contested through book bans and restrictions on what courses and specializations can be offered; with that, students can hope that their university library can serve as a counterweight to polarization of the United States’ two-party system and media that’s subject to epistemic distortion. With that baseline, the assumption would hold that a university, especially a prestigious, privately-funded one like Brandeis, would carry a variety of classics, theoretical, and critically challenging books. Books that apply to students from all backgrounds, political opinions, and curiosities. This is not to say that Brandeis is short of literary material; with 800,000 volumes available, it is certain that there is a portion of the student body that is satisfied with the reading material offered. This sect of the student body can likely be grouped under a common political framework.
The Brandeis library website does a satisfactory job of directing students to the floor and row where their book of choice is located. The majority of books are organized by year and broad subject area. Upon investigating the volumes offered at Brandeis, certain titles that are currently shelved stood out. The method of this search requires having a Brandeis login to the library and utilizing the “Advanced Search” option while maintaining the active filter as “Physical Items at Brandeis.” The numerical results discussed here refer to recorded search results for physical items, rather than a comprehensive count of every unique book, electronic resource, or argument represented in the library. Although these results cannot independently establish the ideological position of the volumes present, they provide a foundation for questioning which subjects receive greater visibility and how students encounter different areas of scholarship.
Angela Davis and Patricia Collins are some of the most prolific and notable alumni from the Brandeis community. They are distinguished, founding authors in Black feminist radical thought, and have made foundational contributions in examining the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and power. Nevertheless, their works appear about 200 times combined. “Black Feminism” in the search bar appears 480 times. While this number alone seems substantial, it pales in comparison to the number of works in other subject areas observed. “Israel” and “Zionism” appear 32,780 times and 4329 times, respectively. “Nationalism” appears 6,727 times. “Chattel Slavery” appears 21 times, and “Slavery” appears 4,812 times—keep in mind that Slavery is a very broad, historically dense term. “Liberalism” appears 2,512 times. “Capitalism” appears 3,448 times. “Marxism” appears 2,380 times. “Social Democracy” appears 7,096 times. “White Supremacy” appears 340 times. “Settler Colonialism” appears 176 times. “Anti-colonialism” appears 386 times. “Populism” appears 580 times. “Epistemology” appears 2,321 times.
This does not necessarily mean that each of these volumes is written in agreement with the words searched; of course, a title does not display the contents of a literary work entirely. Nevertheless, these results reveal that the contexts of the Library emphasize certain political frameworks over others. The results for capitalism, Marxism, liberalism, and social democracy, for example, suggest that multiple political-economic traditions are present. Nevertheless, the disparity between particular search terms raises questions about how different subjects become visible within the library. Discrepancies of book titles above do not prove that Brandeis endorses a specific ideology that consequently marginalizes its critics. However, this discovery warrants further investigation into how knowledge at this university is classified, encountered, and pursued.
Search counts are not an unbiased measure of a subject’s importance; they are also products of the methods that Brandeis approaches terminology, indexing, and cataloging practices.
To clarify, I am not implying that Brandeis must have the exact same number of literature on every subject, nor would reducing the number on one subject be a productive solution. Rather, I argue that the university’s responsibility is to cultivate an environment in which disparate intellectual traditions and curiosities can meaningfully encounter and challenge one another. If the consumption of information through media makes this reality increasingly challenging, it is hopeful that students can trust their library to provide media that questions their assumptions. Knowledge can be extensive while remaining difficult to navigate, and a collection can contain critical perspectives without making them equally discoverable and accessible, especially when a significant number of important literary works are labeled as “missing.” The library could review how politically and historically significant subjects are registered, develop interdisciplinary research guides that place competing interpretations alongside one another to offer an online-tool that maintains accessibility and greater transparency.
Ultimately, Brandeis should strive to create conditions of critical inquiry, particularly as the university works to uphold its alleged commitment to social justice.
