The unfolding events in Israel and in Gaza have made this an excruciating time for so many of us. Amid the shock, horror, hurt, anger, dread, and other emotions coursing through our community, we have redoubled our commitment to the protection of writers, journalists, thinkers, and artists caught in the crossfire, and to the rights of everyone at home to voice competing viewpoints. Our expertise on free speech on the college campus has come into focus as universities are roiled in controversy. Working with university presidents, faculty, and students, we reassert our dedication to ensuring that the college campus is truly open to all people and all ideas.
PEN DEFENDS
Universities Must Commit to an Open Exchange of Ideas
With campus controversies and protests occurring amid the ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza, this week we issued guidance drawing on our years of focus on campus free speech and denounced efforts to silence or punish students for speaking out. “It is the duty of higher education to foster an environment where open discourse and disagreement across the ideological spectrum can occur.”
We deplore the premeditated and vicious attack launched against Israeli civilians, resulting in hundreds of deaths, countless wounded and scores kidnapped, held hostage, and unaccounted for. We also mourn the devastating loss of civilian lives in Gaza and condemn threats to free expression and the free flow of vital information to the public arising out of the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas. Political conflicts, even when they involve grave denials of human rights, can never justify nor be resolved through attacks on innocent civilians. We call on all parties to uphold the sanctity of human life and to safeguard civilians and human rights.
Recently, we spoke to George M. Johnson’s mother and aunts about their wildly successful challenge of a ban of All Boys Aren’t Blue near their home in New Jersey. “I didn’t know what to expect,” Kaye Johnson said. “So now you’re looking around and you’re wondering, how far are we gonna go with this? Are we gonna get physically attacked? So then you just go on the defense, and you say, God cover us, and move forward.”
This week’s Member Spotlight features Fireworks Every Night by PEN America Member Beth Raymer. A young woman trapped in a deeply dysfunctional family in the seedy wilds of 1990s South Florida has to make a choice—save her family, or save herself—in this larger-than-life debut novel from the acclaimed author of Lay the Favorite.
Forget about sweater weather and pumpkin spice. For us, fall is all about curling up with a great book. Among the events kicking off the season were Justin Torres in conversation with Angela Flournoy about his National Book Award short-listed novel, Blackouts. A.M. Homes and Ayad Akhtar spoke about placing politics under the microscope, in conversation with Sarah Thankam Mathews. And in collaboration with the Dart Center, we hosted a conversation with Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Maria Ressa and investigative journalist Patricia Evangelista about Evangelista’s new book Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country.
Before becoming an Emerging Voices fellow Nathan Go shied away from writing narratives that leaned into his identity and his own experience as a Filipino immigrant. This has changed, though, and Go, a member of the 2012 Emerging Voices cohort, recently published his debut novel, Forgiving Imelda Marcos. Go discussed the book and his experience as a fellow in an interview with PEN America.
Karin Karlekar wrote about the electrifying moment when Narges Mohammadi won the Nobel Peace Prize and what the honor would mean for her freedom and the broader movement for women’s and human rights in Iran. (Ms. Magazine)
Karlekar also wrote that India's case against Arundhati Roy is a big red flag for free speech (MSNBC)
In a column by Will Bunch, our Jonathan Friedman spoke about the need for universities to commit to an open exchange of controversial and often differing views on topics like current events or world history. “Right now is not the time for universities to back away from their core commitment." (Philadelphia Inquirer)
PEN America called on Scholastic to resist being an accessory to government censorship. (School Library Journal)
WHAT WE'RE READING
Salman Rushdie has a memoir coming out about the horrifying attack that left him blind in his right eye and with a damaged left hand. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder will be published April 16. (AP)
An open letter from participants in the Palestine Festival of Literature, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Molly Crabapple, Natalie Diaz, Maaza Mengiste, and Solmas Sharif, calls on the international community “to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and to finally pursuing a comprehensive and just political solution in Palestine.” (The New York Review of Books)
"Now that we are truly as a family in this fight, we will not only continue to fight for George, but we continue to fight for all the other voices that are out there that people are trying to suppress."
- George M. Johnson's aunt, Stephanie Elder-Law, on the family's successful fight against a ban of All Boys Aren't Blue
TRENDING @ PENAMERICA
Books Change Lives
For Banned Books Week, we were joined in the fight by Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, Mandy Patinkin and Kathyrn Grody, Edie Falco, Neil Gaiman, Andrea Martin, B.D. Wong, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Kate Miller, Wendie Malick, Lewis Black, Matthew Del Negro,and hundreds of people on Instagram who shared videos about life-changing books.
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