The president of PEN, America’s top body defending freedom of expression, has resigned in protest after the organisation published an article highlighting the discrimination faced by Israeli and Jewish writers.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, said he had stepped down because - he claimed - the article sought “to suppress constitutionally protected speech” and would be used to justify legislation against the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
The article, titled “A Silent Moratorium”, featured the testimony of more than 30 Jewish and Israeli writers, translators and literary agents, who described “event disinvitations and cancellations, and new and growing barriers to publication”.
Interviewees also recounted “being harassed on social media, ‘review-bombed’ on [the online review site] Goodreads, and subjected to online calls not to be read, platformed, or engaged with if they had ever shown support for Israel or Zionism.”
The piece also noted how some writers described “being ignored by agents, publishers, literary journals, and magazines”.
It stated that “the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them [Jewish and Israeli writers] out because of their identity, nationality, or views. They describe an environment that has impacted their reputations and livelihoods, led people to self-censor, and created an overall chilling of their ability to write and create freely.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” it says.
Mengestu, an author and the programme director of written arts at New York’s Bard College, told the New York Times that the article “continues this approach towards defending some rights while not defending others.”
He accused PEN of an “ongoing failure to defend free expression fairly and equitably” and wrote that the Palestinian experience was being “diminished almost to the point of erasure.”
Jewish authors and figures in the publishing industry have voiced disappointment at Mengestu’s resignation, and his comments.
“This article explains how Jews are being pushed out of publishing, even if they’re Israeli dissidents, even if they’re American Jews whose writing never even mentions Israel,” wrote Heidi Rabinowitz, host of “The Book of Life Podcast” and a Judaica librarian in Florida. “The only possible reason for this is antisemitism.”
Meg Keene, who has been working with the Anti-Defamation League to create a report about antisemitism in the publishing industry since October 7 said Mengestu’s resignation “shows you where we are, and how bad it really is.”
Suzanne Nossel, a former CEO of PEN America, resigned in 2024 following pressure from the group Writers Against the War on Gaza. The group claimed that Nossel had made a career of “defending Israel.”
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