PEN America’s Report on Jewish Writers Divides Literary World as President Resigns In Protest

PEN America’s president has resigned after the free speech group released a report detailing how Israeli and Jewish writers have faced “rising isolation and exclusion” in the aftermath of 2023’s Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

The Ethiopian novelist Dinaw Mengestu had held the organization’s leadership position since December 2025. He told The New York Times that Pen America’s report, which examines the impacts of cultural boycotts, unfairly maligns the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, an attempt to economically isolate Israel.

The July 9 report, titled “A Silent Moratorium,” was the work of three authors. They include PEN America’s editorial director Lisa Tobin, a veteran of NBC News and the Associated Press, as well as its chief communications officer Geraldine Baum, a longtime former staff writer for The Los Angeles Times who earned a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service early in her career at Newsday.

“In this piece, we share the stories of Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views,” the authors wrote, explaining the report was based on interviews with more than 30 Israeli and Jewish writers and literary professionals. “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.”

The organization, whose membership includes many screenwriters, is known for its civil liberties advocacy. In 2020, it released a study which took film studios and major directors to task for relinquishing creative control of projects — including decisions involving cast, dialogue, plot and settings — in “an effort to avoid antagonizing Chinese officials.”

Suzanne Nossel, the Jewish long-tenured previous president of PEN America, resigned in 2024 amid criticism inside and outside the group over its alleged failure to speak out about threats against Palestinian writers amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which the organization’s anti-Zionist critics insist should be termed a genocide. Defenders of Israel believe that designation is fallacious and dangerous.

The tumult affected the organization’s events and programming. That year, Seth Meyers hosted its annual black-tie gala, joking that 2024 was “a year PEN America will always remember as super chill and laid back.”

Writers Against the War on Gaza — whose past petition signatories have included the likes of George R.R. Martin, Gael Garcia Bernal and Susan Sarandon — saluted Mengestu’s “principled decision” in a social media statement. Other writers rejected his stand. “Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” wrote author David Zweig in his own post. “Why not blacklist authors from his birthplace, Ethiopia? Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record. What about Russian, Chinese, or Syrian writers? Nope. According to Dinaw Mengestu everyone is fine unless they happen to be from Israel.” (Mengestu has also published work as a journalist, including reporting about Darfur’s genocide in Sudan for Rolling Stone.)

The latest crisis at PEN America highlights tensions in the literary world over Israel and Palestine which mirror those in the entertainment industry. In Sept. 2025, thousands of film workers — headlined by the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Ava DuVernay and Tilda Swinton — vowed not to work with their Israeli counterparts, an effort which those boycotted saw as misguided and self-defeating. Among the apparent repercussions was director Nadav Lapid’s departure this spring from the Marseilles International Film Festival. (He’s a sharp critic of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.) Meanwhile, earlier this month, the country’s right-wing culture minister promised to defund filmmakers who “defame Israel.”