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PEN America Cancels Awards Ceremony Amid Boycott Over 'Disgraceful' Gaza Response
"We cannot, in good faith, align with an organization that has shown such blatant disregard of our collective values," a group of authors and translators wrote in an open letter.
Apr 23, 2024
The prominent free expression group PEN America announced Monday that it has canceled its 2024 literary awards ceremony amid growing backlash over the organization's response to Israel's assault on Gaza and alleged attempts to suppress dissent among its employees.
The decision came after nearly half of the authors nominated for PEN America awards withdrew their names from consideration, accusing PEN America of not sufficiently speaking out against Israel's war on Gaza and the dire consequences for free expression.
The awards ceremony was scheduled to take place on April 29 in Manhattan.
In an open letter released last week, dozens of authors and translators who refused to accept any honors from the organization wrote that "PEN America has remained shamefully unwilling to speak out against the systematic nature" of Israel's "often-targeted killings of Palestinian writers, professors, and journalists and their families."
"We stand in solidarity with one another and with the people of Palestine in our refusal to lend our names and tacit approval to PEN America's disgraceful inaction," reads the open letter, which demands the resignation of PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, president Jennifer Finney Boylan, and the group's entire executive committee.
"We cannot, in good faith, align with an organization that has shown such blatant disregard of our collective values," the letter adds. "We stand in solidarity with a free Palestine. We refuse to be honored by an organization that acts as a cultural front for American imperialism. We refuse to gild the reputation of an organization that runs interference for an administration aiding and abetting genocide with our tax dollars. And we refuse to take part in anything that will serve to overshadow PEN's complicity in normalizing genocide."
"We have been disgusted, for months, by the sight of these leaders clinging to a disingenuous façade of neutrality."
Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, PEN America's literary programming chief officer, said in a statement Monday that "we greatly respect that writers have followed their consciences, whether they chose to remain as nominees in their respective categories or not."
"We regret that this unprecedented situation has taken away the spotlight from the extraordinary work selected by esteemed, insightful, and hard-working judges across all categories," Rosaz Shariyf added. "As an organization dedicated to freedom of expression and writers, our commitment to recognizing and honoring outstanding authors and the literary community is steadfast."
Outrage over PEN America's approach to Israel's war on the Gaza Strip has been intensifying for months.
In March, as Common Dreamsreported at the time, Naomi Klein, Michelle Alexander, and other high-profile writers pulled out of the PEN World Voices Festival, accusing PEN America of betraying "the organization's professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to freedom and security for writers everywhere."
After initially refusing to do so, PEN America late last month joined its global parent PEN International in calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. But the organization's critics—including current and former employees—argue it has failed to clearly and forcefully condemn Israel's assault, which has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza and fueled a catastrophic humanitarian emergency.
"We have been disgusted, for months, by the sight of these leaders clinging to a disingenuous façade of neutrality while parroting hasbara talking points," the open letter from PEN America award nominees states. "We have also been appalled to learn that management has sought to suppress the off-hours political speech and activity of its own workers, in part by suggesting language by which staffers could be punished for participating in any political activity that undermines PEN America's mission."
The Interceptreported late last month that PEN America staffers also raised concerns in December over Nossel's decision to visit Israel amid the country's devastating attack on Gaza.
"We are concerned that Suzanne Nossel's trip as planned will be perceived as a dismissal of the urgent and worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and free expression and human rights violations in the West Bank and in Israel," the staffers wrote.
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Prominent Writers Withdraw From PEN World Voices Festival Over Gaza
"If organizations like PEN America cling to the illusion of political neutrality in the face of a clear effort to destroy Palestinian lives and culture, one can only wonder whether there will be any writers left in Gaza to tell the story."
Mar 14, 2024
Writers including Naomi Klein, Michelle Alexander, Hisham Matar, Isabella Hamad, and Zaina Arafat announced Wednesday that they will not participate in this year's PEN World Voices Festival over what they say is host PEN America's weak response to Israel's "cultural genocide" in Gaza.
"We have concluded that attending this year's festival would only serve to contribute to the illusion that PEN America is truly devoted to 'the defense of free speech at the center of humanity's struggle against repression,' as it has claimed," the writers said in an open letter published by Literary Hub announcing their decision. "In the context of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, we believe that PEN America has betrayed the organization's professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to freedom and security for writers everywhere."
"This failure is particularly striking in light of the extraordinary toll this catastrophe has taken in the cultural sphere," the letter continues. "Israel has killed, and at times deliberately targeted and assassinated journalists, poets, novelists, and writers of all kinds. It has destroyed almost all forms of cultural infrastructure that support the practice of literature, art, intellectual exchange, and free speech through the bombing and demolition of universities, cultural centers, museums, libraries, and printing presses."
"In less than five months, Israel has killed nearly 100 journalists and media workers, more than in the two-decade war in Afghanistan, and more than in the deadliest year of the Iraq War," the authors noted. "Israel has also killed nearly 100 academics and writers. If organizations like PEN America cling to the illusion of political neutrality in the face of a clear effort to destroy Palestinian lives and culture, one can only wonder whether there will be any writers left in Gaza to tell the story of their apocalypse, or to trust words and speech, when the killing finally ends. Or any record left of the history they have lived."
According to Palestinian officials and international humanitarian groups, Israeli forces have killed at least 31,341 Palestinians—mostly women and children—in Gaza since October 7 while wounding more than 73,100 others and leaving thousands more missing and believed buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of damaged or destroyed buildings. Around 9 in 10 Gazans have been forcibly displaced, many of them more than once.
As the letter notes:
In January, the International Court of Justice found it plausible that Israel's siege on Gaza could amount to genocide and ordered 'immediate and effective measures' to protect Palestinians in the occupied territories by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance and enabling basic services. Thousands more Palestinian adults and children have been killed since the ICJ ruling; not only has Israel refused to facilitate adequate aid, it has actually hindered it. Hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of famine, and a growing number of children and elderly people are dying of malnutrition and dehydration even after they survive the bombing of their homes. Despite all this, PEN America has declined to join other leading human rights organizations and United Nations officials in the demands for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire.
The letter also laments PEN America's "history of condemning authors who choose to honor the Palestinian call for a cultural and academic boycott of Israeli institutions complicit in their oppression."
The writers said that condemning the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights "contradicts PEN's own mandate to protect freedom of expression, as it contributes to a neo-McCarthyite environment in North America and Europe, in which the growing support for BDS is increasingly criminalized."
"Opposition to BDS overlooks the long and proud history of the boycott as an effective, nonviolent tool of collective liberation," the letter states. "Just as boycott was a principal tool used to successfully end political apartheid in South Africa, so it should be accepted that some are free to adopt it as a vital tool in the nonviolent resistance movement against Israeli impunity today."
"The global network of PEN chapters and PEN International has a long history of providing a safe haven for artists under siege," the authors noted. "It has not only saved individual lives by evacuating writers from danger zones (including from Gaza) but has created gatherings where writers under attack can experience the warmth of genuine solidarity from the global literary community."
"If the current onslaught was directed against any other people, there would have been clear condemnations of the crime."
"Palestinian writers deserve that kind of respite. Instead, many have found themselves in the insulting position of having to fight PEN America to loudly call for the U.S.-funded bombs to stop falling," they said. "They have been forced to point out, over and over again, that if the current onslaught was directed against any other people, there would have been clear condemnations of the crimes, as well as support for all forms of nonviolent resistance against oppression, alongside events focused on the artists who are the most vulnerable in the world."
"We hope," the signers added, "that our decision not to participate will add to existing efforts to yield concrete and lasting change at a time that calls for moral courage from us all."
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'Corroding Civil Liberties,' Supreme Court Codifies Unlawful Police Stops
"This case tells everyone...that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent
Jun 20, 2016
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence recovered during illegal stops may still be used in court if police officers conducted their searches after learning that a defendant had an outstanding arrest warrant.
In a 5-3 ruling (pdf), the Supreme Court said such searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented, slammed the decision, writing in a sharp rebuke that the case "tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent...that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights."
Justices Elena Kagen and Ruth Bader Ginsburg also dissented.
The case is Utah v. Strieff, in which a police officer stopped defendant Edward Strieff because were later ruled to be inadequate; during the stop, the officer discovered Strieff had an outstanding warrant for a traffic violation and conducted a search--discovering methamphetamines and drug pipe. A district court later ruled that although Utah Detective Douglas Fackrell did not have the right to stop Strieff, the evidence collected during the search could be used in a trial.
In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote, "Most striking about the Court's opinion is its insistence that the event here was 'isolated,' with 'no indication that this unlawful stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct.'" But in fact, she continued, "Nothing about this case is isolated."
Citing Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, among others, Sotomayor wrote:
For generations, black and brown parents have given their children "the talk"--instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger--all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.
By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time. It says that your body is subject to an invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged. We must not pretend that the countless people who are targeted by police are "isolated." They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere. They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system will continue to be anything but.
Sotomayor also noted that 76 percent of the population of Ferguson, Missouri--which has been under the national spotlight since the 2014 police killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown--has outstanding warrants against them. The unconstitutional policies endemic within the city's justice system have been widely reported.
"This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants--even if you are doing nothing wrong," she wrote.
The ACLU said on Twitter that it was "deeply disappointed" by the ruling and warned that it would have "terrible repercussions, [especially] for people of color." The organization also praised Sotomayor's "much-needed" dissent for highlighting the decision's racial impact.
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