The War on Thinking
The War on Thinking
May 15, 2026 2:45pm 3:45pm Coral Ballroom A
Reading communities are shaped by cultural and political moments, and right now that moment is loud. Fascist movements have always risen alongside anti-intellectualism, and bookish spaces are feeling the pressure. Curiosity gets framed as elitism. Nuance gets read as hostility. Disagreement gets dismissed as “media illiteracy.” This panel looks at how those moves are showing up in the conversations we have about books, what gets lost when discourse flattens to slogans, and what it actually takes to build a reading community that values, well… thinking.