Dinaw Mengestu on PEN America’s Committment to Freedom of Expression

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a response to the ongoing demands for a PEN America boycott that did its best to address the many legitimate concerns and shortcomings that PEN America has been forced to reckon with over the past year. That response, similar to the recent statements and apology issued by PEN America, was explicit in its support and recognition of the vital role dissent has played and continues to play, while also pushing back against the inaccurate claim that PEN America had tried to circumvent any potential withdrawals from its awards.

It’s important now, however, to be clear about what PEN America has and has not done, not from an institutional standpoint, but from the perspective of a writer who for the past year has been deeply involved in trying to help repair the deep well of mistrust between the organization and its members. No one expects that work to happen easily. No one imagines that trust is restored overnight. As we all know, that kind of repair happens slowly, through engagement and dialogue, through difficult conversations that address head-on the inequities and imbalance of the past.

Over this past year, I’ve also watched the staff at PEN America do everything they can to provide as much meaningful support to Palestinian writers as the organization is institutionally capable of. Those efforts, to succeed, required countless hours from staff and board members and the support of international partners. The staff who worked on this have marshaled every resource available to them, just as they’ve done to support writers in Ukraine, just as they are doing now in Sudan They have been relentless in their efforts and have worked with the utmost discretion and care because in the end, it is the impact that matters, not the attention.

Doing that kind of work requires an extraordinary amount of time, effort, labor and resources–something that the current social media campaign to boycott PEN America has chosen to ignore or dismiss as it also continues to revise its demands to include things such as providing material support for Palestinian prisoners. Such demands are so far beyond PEN America’s mission or capacity that the only reason to put them forward is to ensure that they will never be met. Other demands strike against the very basic principle of defending expression that PEN America is predicated upon.

It’s essential to note here that there is nothing censorious about making those demands. It is also essential that we reject the suggestion that such demands are threatening. All too often, there are deliberate attempts to conflate passionate, even strident demands for justice and human rights with the actual censorship and repression of the state. While I couldn’t disagree more fiercely with the boycott campaign and the denigration, by some, of those who disagree with it, I also know that for the vast majority of writers, the goal is not to dismantle PEN America but to change the discourse and language of dehumanization that makes the kind of horrific ongoing violence that we are witnessing today possible.

As one chapter of an international writers’ organization, PEN America’s defense of free expression is not rooted in law but in literature and in the singular voice of the writers who make it. Every day, we see what happens when a government, under the banner of protecting free speech, or in the supposed defense against the very real threat of antisemitism, chooses to curate which voices have the right to speak and which ones don’t. That brutal repression is a reminder that PEN America’s defense and advocacy must be rendered vigorously and equitably, regardless of who sits in power. What matters more than the boycott against PEN America is how committed we are to protecting and defending, particularly in this moment, any group’s right to do just that.

Last summer, I left the Giller Prize jury after it became clear that the foundation supporting the prize had no intention to divorce itself from either its corporate sponsor’s investment in an arms manufacturer or from its attempts to silence any potential dissent among writers. Before leaving the jury, I spent weeks talking with members of the foundation, hoping for an outcome that would allow all Canadian writers to feel they could participate in the prize without compromising their values.

Like every writer I know, what I value most is life, in all of its messy complexity, and the ability to express that complexity through language. That is why I am here now, working alongside PEN America’s staff and board members whose commitment to that value is staggering. It is also why, like the vast majority of PEN America’s advocates and critics, we will work together despite our often profound differences to write, defend, and advocate on behalf of writers, regardless of where they stand.

Dinaw Mengestu is the Vice President of the PEN America Board of Trustees