In the turbulent Vietnam War era, some college campus buildings were temporarily closed because anonymous callers said they had planted bombs, though often it turned out they hadn’t. College educations suffered.
Now public libraries around the Chicago area and the nation — already beset by demands to remove books from their collections — are shutting their doors to give police time to search for bombs that anonymous messages say were planted. Although the closures haven’t lasted long, it’s a dangerous moment for a society when the very buildings that should be places of ideas and community are held hostage by a nameless individual or individuals who want to undermine the ideals for which libraries stand.
