Below is a transcript of the relevant portions of the panel. (Pearl has since released a statement saying she has changed her position on the topic and explaining why—and that full statement is also below.)

High school student and library ambassador Jorge Flores offered an opening statement: Being a 16-year-old, we don’t know that much about the world, and reading from banned books can be important because we get these ideas, this information that we need to learn to go to the real world. I think the library is a place to self-educate about those things. You can only learn so much from school and from your parents. You need to try to gather information from both sides and to see what books you can read and how it can be important for your life and how you can continue forward. Because if you gather information and ideas from these banned books, the road ahead will be a little easier because you have all of these things figured out as a teenager, right? Because when you’re a teenager, you’ve got all of these questions in your head about what should I do, what do I want to become, where do I want to be? But if you figure that out, the road ahead will be a little bit easier. So that’s why I think reading from banned books can be critical for a young adult.

After applause for Flores, Pearl said: I guess I would just say that I’ve always thought there should be a T-shirt or poster in every library that says, “There is something in my library to offend everyone,” because it wouldn’t be a library if there weren’t. When I was in charge of collection development at the Tulsa Public Library, one of the hardest things was facing up to your own prejudices. Like what did I not want to add in the collection? Personally, I did not want to add Holocaust denying books. That was offensive to me. Did I think we needed them? Sad to say, yes. But you know we talk about we shouldn’t ban books, it’s much more nuanced and it’s much more difficult than one often tends to think that it is.

After a brief silence, Reynolds asks Flores, “What happens now?” and Flores responded, “It seems like I have to ask you questions.”

His last question was, "How do we stop book banning?"

Reynolds: Here’s the thing for me, I don’t know the answer to this question. I think that’s the thing we’re trying so hard to figure out. I think that unfortunately or fortunately for that matter, it has to be a legal thing. To me, I think it should be against the law. The reason why I say that—it’s the way I feel about racism, right? What happens with racism is everybody says, ‘What are we going to do to change, to get people to not be racist?’ That’s the conversation we’re having all the time. Here’s the thing, that’s not necessarily my focus. I don’t know if it’s on me to change your heart, especially if you don’t want to change your heart. I just need for there to be laws in place so that your hatred can’t negatively affect my life. Right? It's a little bit more pragmatic. I know we get all cupcakie and we just want it to be kumbaya. No. We’re human beings. There are going to be people who hate you for no reason. It’s one of these weird things, right? I don’t know if I have the energy to try to get that person to see me as a human. If they don’t, they don’t. I just know that I have the energy to make sure that I vote and fight and politicize and organize to make sure that there are laws in place to make sure that that person’s hatred can't harm me. Can't harm me.

So when I think about book banning, and I don’t have the answer, I’m trying to figure out well if parents or community members don’t like a thing that I made, what can there be in place to stop that one person or two people’s opinion from having my book removed from an institution? They can hate me forever. It does not matter. I don’t know these people, right? It does not bother me. But the thing that I make deserves to live, and how can I stop that from happening? That I feel like is a legal thing. I don’t know that much about politics, but I feel that it’s legal somehow. You’d probably know better than me.

Pearl: I think you've explained it beautifully. I think that parents tend to want books to be banned that they think will in some ways harm their child. But I think, what we have to teach parents—and I don't know how to do this—is that a child gets from a book exactly what their child is ready to get. And I used to, you know, just used to make me sort of laugh inside when somebody would come up to me and say, ‘Oh, my 8-year-old just read all seven of the Harry Potter books, and you know, just loved them all.’ And I thought, well, you know, great, that's wonderful, let's find something else. But let me tell you an 8-year-old who reads book six and book seven is not getting what a 16-year-old, which is the age that J.K. Rowling wrote those books for, what a 16 or 17-year-old is getting out of those books. And so the fear, I think, is unfounded. But can you teach that to a parent? I don't know.

Reynolds: We'll have to stop because like the thing that really gets me, because I'm always like, what could there be for you to be afraid of that can't be fixed with healthy conversation? It's so strange. It's just weird. I don't know. I can't tell nobody how to parent, right? I can’t tell no one how a parent.

When the Q&A was over, Caldwell-Stone stepped to the podium and spoke, thanking Reynolds for bringing up the legal aspect, noting that there are in fact laws in place but they are ignored and not enforced. She finished her comments by asking Reynolds and Pearl what “Unite Against Book Bans” means to them.

Reynolds: It's interesting, because to me, Unite Against Book Bans—it's in the title. But I think that the word that is probably the one that is that is glossed over the most is the word “unite.” I know it's the first word, and it's easy to say it, but it's so much harder to do it. And so in order to unite against this, strange, strange thing that is happening, and it has been happening, by the way, for a very, very long time. I think that there are so many things that we have to leave at home. You know, I think that so much of our issues with uniting in general, it has to do with—everyone has their own personal line. And I think when it comes to this, there has to be a conversation about all the books. Like when you said that it kind of hit me in the gut like ‘Ooof,’ when we were talking about people who are Holocaust deniers, right? And books written by Holocaust deniers. And you know immediately my knee-jerk reaction is like, ‘That feels dangerous.’

But the truth is, the hard truth is, that if we are going to fight against book bans, it includes all the books, and I think that's what makes it a complicated gig, but that's also what makes it a necessary thing. And [it’s] also what I think makes librarians the most special people on the planet. And this is real. Any of you have heard me give a talk about librarians, you've heard me say this, and I do mean this. I think that the beauty of the of the librarian is that you all could be the archetype of like the best of the American or the best of the human simply because you recognize that like, it may not be a thing that you're comfortable with or think that you agree with or think that you believe in, it is still belongs on the shelf, it still deserves to live. And there's something to be said for that and if we were to transpose that in every other part of our lives, but I think that's what it's going to take, that kind of mentality to truly unite against the book banning. It's hard to do, because when that book comes up that triggers you, suddenly, you're not there. It's a little harder to show up, you know, but that's what's necessary.

Pearl: Yeah, I think that the whole issue is much more nuanced and important than we sometimes think that it is. And I think it's important to recognize that. I mean if there are yard signs saying, ‘Science is real,’ do we want books in our libraries that say dinosaurs never existed? Or, you know, that men never landed on the moon? What do we do with that? I mean, it's a really hard, hard question. And I think that is something that needs to be talked about. I don't even know exactly how I feel about that.

Pearl’s statement following the conference:

I’ve been considering my comments at the recent ALA panel re the appropriateness of including Holocaust denial literature in public and school libraries, and the apparent inconsistencies in my expressed views. I did say on the panel that perhaps it was appropriate to include such literature in library collections. When I was pressed on the point afterwards, however, I asked myself whether, if I were currently in charge of collection development in a public library, I would include Holocaust denial literature, and concluded that I wouldn’t. I’ve already made a statement to that effect. Then someone brought to my attention a 9/29/2017 Tulsa World article in which I said that I had included books promoting Holocaust denial in my library’s collection.

The statements I made as a panel member and in the Tulsa World reflected how long ago I went to library school and how long it’s been since I worked in collection development. I got my M.L.S from the University of Michigan in 1967, where I was taught that libraries were value neutral and should include all viewpoints in their collections. My only job doing collection development was at the Tulsa Public Library system, where I was the head of collection development from 1988 until 1993.

But times change and libraries and librarians live in a very different world today, something I didn’t really have to consider until the ALA panel; the view that I expressed on the ALA panel and in the Tulsa World article reflected the “value inclusive, i.e. include all viewpoints” ethic that I learned in library school. Were I involved in collection development today, I would make different decisions.

There is obviously a tension between the “value inclusive/include all viewpoints” ethic and the “dangers of misinformation” ethic, and the changing views within the library profession now appropriately reflect our changing information environment. Back in the day, before Google (1998), Facebook (2004), and Twitter (2006), there was a consensual view about what was true and what was false that was agreed to by all but the furthest fringes of the population. We might be divided about who should win an election, but we were never divided about who had won an election. The problem of misinformation seemed relatively small: A library patron who read a book promoting Holocaust denial could go to an encyclopedia for further information, or to a librarian for suggestions of additional reading, both of which actions would probably have resulted in a correction to the misinformation of Holocaust denial. Today, they would go to Facebook to be led by its algorithm down a rabbit hole of further misinformation and contact with other holocaust deniers. At that time, the problem of suppression of unpopular viewpoints seemed large (see McCarthyism). Thus, the ethic emphasizing the dangers of viewpoint suppression over the dangers of misinformation as I was taught in library school. But, as our information environment has changed, so too does the ethic informing collection development need to change. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have clearly heightened the danger of misinformation.