Pen America chief resigns, accuses literary institution of erasing Palestinians
After just seven months in the role, the president of one of the foremost US literary organisations resigned last week over what he described as the unfair treatment of Palestinians compared to Israelis and Jewish Americans.
Dinaw Mengestu, a celebrated Ethiopian-American novelist, exited the top job at Pen America on Thursday after the group published a report about the emotional toll on Israeli and Jewish-American writers after the fallout from Israel's nearly three-year-long genocide in Gaza.
Many reported losing jobs or career opportunities.
Mengestu wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday that "it is not about different opinions" or "different experiences", but rather "PEN America's ongoing failure to defend free expression fairly and equitably", as it keeps producing work that "supports suppression through bigotry and indifference".
That suppression, he described, comes from undermining the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he maintained is also a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
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Middle East Eye reached out to Mengestu, but did not hear back in time for publication.
'Erasure'
BDS was launched by Palestinians in 2005 as a global, nonviolent movement towards ending the Israeli occupation, segregation, and blockade of Palestinians, in the same way successful pressure was applied to Apartheid South Africa.
Pen had long characterised BDS as an "assault on the identity of Jewish students", Mengestu said on Instagram, adding that "the Palestinian experience is diminished... almost to the point of erasure".
'For a lot of us, principles are the only thing we have'
- Writers Against The War on Gaza
"What PEN America fails to understand is that a boycott is a form of dialogue," he added.
"The writers who boycotted the organization in 2024 wanted change, and they returned when they believed that such change was possible."
Some of those writers were, or remain, part of the influential Writers Against The War on Gaza (Wawog) movement, though the group declined to confirm to MEE how many members it has or what its demographic makeup is.
Its website spotlights some 400 successful outcomes of cultural boycotts across North America since 2023.
Some two weeks into the start of Israel's assault on Gaza in October 2023, Wawog labelled it as a genocide - a term the United Nations, historians and genocide scholars have now agreed is appropriate.
"We understand and commend [Mengestu] for not wanting to be associated with an institution that would... equate BDS as discriminatory," a Wawog representative who declined to be named for this story told MEE on Monday. "For a lot of us, principles are the only thing we have."
Pen America, the representative added, consistently compares "material genocidal violence against Palestinians" to "semantic argument", when it comes to Israelis and Jewish Americans who support Zionism.
"The desecration of cultural spaces in Gaza, wiping out the universities, killing scholars and writers and arresting them, it just doesn't even compare."
When reached for comment by MEE, Pen America only said it is "grateful for Dinaw Mengestu's leadership" and that it "respect[s] that he's made a decision he believes in".
"We recognize people can disagree about how best to apply free expression principles in this extraordinarily difficult environment," the organisation added.
Pen
Pen, a more than one-hundred-year-old institution that prides itself on defending all forms of speech, explained in its 9 July report about Israeli and Jewish writers that it "opposes any efforts to inhibit the free international exchange of literature, art, knowledge, or culture, including cultural and academic boycotts," but that it is also willing to "defend the rights of writers to do so without facing retaliation".
That caveat was only added over the past week, Pen confirmed to MEE in an email on Monday.
"The public-facing version of that position we first articulated in 2007 has not changed, however it did not address the fact that participating in or advocating for boycotts is also protected speech and an exercise of free expression," Pen said.
In his Instagram post, Mengestu accused Pen of trying to appease all sides by making its stance on boycotts more inclusive, although it's unclear why Pen chose to do that now when pressure has been mounting for years.
"No organized boycott has called for targeting writers solely because they are Jewish," the 9 July report acknowledged. "But in writers’ groups and online forums, Jewish authors... have described losing agents, publishers, and book events since Oct. 7, because they are Jewish, they identify as Zionist, or they are sympathetic to Israel".
As of Monday, the Gaza health ministry has thus far identified at least 73,231 Palestinians killed by Israel since the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people.
Experts estimate that at least 10,000 more Palestinians are likely buried under the vast amounts of rubble strewn across the Israeli-blockaded enclave, while hundreds of thousands have been wounded.
Since US President Donald Trump announced that he brokered a ceasefire in Gaza on 10 October, 1,108 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes or sniper fire.
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