PFLAG Advocate George Takei Named Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week 2025

Out actor, author, and activist George Takei has been named honorary chair of Banned Books Week: Censorship is so 1984, which will take place October 5 – 11, 2025. Takei will be joined in leading the annual event by youth honorary chair Iris Mogul.

“Books are an essential foundation of democracy,” Takei said. “Our ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ depends on a public that is informed and empathetic, and books teach us both information and empathy. Yet the right to read is now under attack from school boards and politicians across America. I’m proud to serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week, because I remember all too well the lack of access to books and media that I needed growing up. First as a child in a barbed-wire prison camp, then as a gay young man in the closet, I felt confused and hungry for understanding about myself and the world around me. Now, as an author, I share my own stories so that new generations will be better informed about their history and themselves. Please stand with me in opposing censorship, so that we all can find ourselves — and each other — in books.”

Takei is an award-winning actor, outspoken civil rights activist, PFLAG National Advocate honoree, and New York Times–bestselling author. He was a breakout star of the Star Trek franchise and is a social media influencer to advocate for social justice, including the visibility and equality of Japanese Americans and LGBTQ people.

In 2019, Takei was honored by PFLAG National with The Betty DeGeneres Advocate Award, an honor that has since been renamed in his honor. The George Takei Advocate Award honors a person who uses their visibility to help advance PFLAG’s work to create a caring, just, and affirming world for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them. It has been awarded to Tom Daley (2023) and BD Wong (2025).

Takei’s award-winning New York Times bestseller They Called Us Enemy (Top Shelf Productions, 2019) uses both words and images to depict his experiences as a child imprisoned, along with 125,000 Japanese Americans, in concentration camps by the U.S. government during World War II. This graphic memoir has been targeted by censors multiple times since publication, most recently in Monroe County School District in Tennessee, where it was among nearly 600 titles removed in an attempt to comply with the state’s vaguely-worded Age-Appropriate Materials Act.

Takei’s latest acclaimed graphic memoir It Rhymes With Takei (Top Shelf Productions, 2025), follows his decision to come out at age 68. Books by and about LGBTQ people, along with books about race and racism and by authors of color, remain in the top ten of most challenged and banned books in the U.S.

Iris Mogul has been named Banned Books Week Youth Honorary Chair. Mogul is a teen who started a banned books club in her community in Florida, after the state implemented laws that resulted in the removal of hundreds of books about race, history, and sexuality from schools. Mogul continued her advocacy work as a student leader in the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Student Advocates for Speech and received an honorable mention from the Miami Herald Silver Knight Awards in May 2025.

Since 2021, the American Library Association and PEN America have tracked a sharp escalation in the attempts to ban books, with thousands of unique titles targeted annually. Books by or about LGBTQ people and people of color make up nearly half of those titles. The majority of book censorship attempts now originate from organized movements. According to ALA, 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 in 2024.

Since it was founded in 1982, Banned Books Week has drawn attention to attempts to remove books and other materials from libraries, schools, and bookstores. Now in its 43rd year, the theme for Banned Books Week 2025 is “Censorship is so 1984. Read for Your Rights.” George Orwell’s cautionary tale 1984 serves as a prescient warning about the dangers of censorship, and 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.

Let Freedom Read Day, a day of action, will be observed on October 11. Everyone is encouraged to take at least one action to fight censorship — all you need is 5 minutes! For information about ways to participate and resources, visit bit.ly/LetFreedomReadDay.

Visit BannedBooksWeek.org for information about events, ways to participate, and promotional materials. Follow Banned Books Week on social media (@BannedBooksWeek on Bluesky, Facebook, and X, @banned_books_week on Instagram) for the latest updates.

About the Banned Books Week Coalition

The Banned Books Week Coalition is an international alliance of diverse organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The Coalition seeks to engage various communities and inspire participation in Banned Books Week through education, advocacy, and the creation of programming about the problem of book censorship.

The coalition includes American Booksellers for Free Expression, American Library Association, Amnesty International USA, Association of University Presses, Banned Books Week Sweden, Children’s Book Council, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Freedom to Read Foundation, Little Free Library, National Book Foundation, National Coalition Against Censorship, National Council of Teachers of English, PEN America, People for the American Way Foundation, PFLAG National. Contributors include American Society of Journalists and Authors, Authors Guild, Index on Censorship, GLAAD, and Project Censored. Banned Books Week receives generous support from Penguin Random House.