This week is Banned Books Week, and Iowa State students and faculty can participate by attending a speech or reading books that have been banned in the past.

Nadine Strossen will be discussing censorship Wednesday at 8 p.m. in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union in a speech titled, “Protecting Our Children or Restricting Our Civil Liberties?”

Strossen is president of the American Civil Liberties Union and a law professor at New York Law School, according to a press release. Some of the organizations and businesses sponsoring Strossen’s speech, include Parks Library, University Bookstore and the Ames Public Library.

Alissa Stoehr, senior in liberal studies and coordinator of Women’s Week on campus, said Strossen’s speech also is included in the Women’s Week festivities.

“We thought she would be a good speaker to have [for Women’s Week] because the main theme is the changing faces of feminism,” Stoehr said. “[Strossen] talks a lot about pornography, and she’s very anti-censorship. [What we’re trying to get across is that] even if you don’t want to see pornography censored, you can still be a feminist.”

Sue Lerdal, employee of the Journalism Reading Room in 114 Hamilton Hall, made a display of books in the journalism collection that have been banned or challenged.

Lerdal said students can stop by the reading room throughout the week to pick up a Banned Books Week bookmark and a piece of candy, while they last.

“[Banned books are] usually young adult books [that] somebody doesn’t think they ought to be reading,” Lerdal said. She said the university library probably is not affected by banned books because academia promotes freedom of information.

Lerdal suggested that students check out the Banned Books Week Web site at http://www.ala.org /bbooks to see the list of books that have been banned, as well as other relevant information. She said some of the books on the list have been challenged but not necessarily banned because people fought off the challenge.

A few of the banned books that students might recognize are “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain; “Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger; “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl;” “Hamlet,” by William Shakespeare; and “On the Origin of Species,” by Charles Darwin.

“Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion, even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular, and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them,” stated the Banned Books Week Web site. “After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.”

Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the America Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Library Association, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers and the National Association of College Stores. It also is endorsed by the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress.