The head of PEN America resigned after the free speech group released a report detailing how Israeli and Jewish writers faced “increasing isolation and exclusion” in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Ethiopian novelist Dinaw Mengistu has been leading the organization since December 2025. New York Times The Pen America report, which examines the effects of cultural boycotts, unfairly maligns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, an attempt to isolate Israel economically.
The July 9 report, titled “The Silent Pause,” was the work of three authors. They include PEN America Managing Editor Lisa Tobin, a veteran of NBC News and the Associated Press, as well as Chief Communications Officer Geraldine Baum, a former longtime staff writer at PEN America. the Los Angeles Times For which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service early in her career Newsday.
“In this article, we share the stories of Jewish and Israeli writers who feel increasingly excluded by the mainstream literary world because of their identity, nationality, or views,” the authors wrote, explaining that the report is based on interviews with more than 30 Israeli and Jewish writers and literary professionals. “They describe an environment that affected their reputations and livelihoods, pushed people into self-censorship, and created a public terror of their ability to write and create freely. The silencing and exclusion of writers poses a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all.”
The organization, whose members include several screenwriters, is known for its advocacy of civil liberties. In 2020, it released a study that tasked film studios and top directors with relinquishing creative control over projects — including decisions about actors, dialogue, plot and settings — in an “attempt to avoid antagonizing Chinese officials.”
Susan Nossel, the former Jewish president of PEN America, resigned in 2024 amid criticism inside and outside the group over her 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 called genocide. Israel’s defenders believe that the classification is fallacious and dangerous.
The impact of the disruption on the organization’s events and programs. That year, Seth Meyers hosted his annual gala, joking that 2024 was “a year that PEN America will always remember as being very quiet and relaxing.”
Writers against the Gaza war — whose petition’s previous signatories include the likes of George R.R. Martin, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Susan Sarandon — praised Mengistu’s “principled decision” in a statement on social media. Other writers rejected his position. “Imagine running a free speech organization and you resign because you refuse to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” author David Zweig wrote in his post. “Why aren’t authors from his birthplace, Ethiopia, blacklisted? Ethiopia doesn’t have a good human rights record. What about Russian, Chinese or Syrian writers? No. According to Dinaw Mengistu, everyone is fine unless they’re from Israel.” (Mengistu has also published work as a journalist, including reports on the Darfur genocide in Sudan for… Rolling Stone.)
The recent crisis at PEN America highlights tensions in the literary world over Israel and Palestine that mirror those in the entertainment industry. In September 2025, thousands of film industry workers – led by the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Ava DuVernay, and Tilda Swinton – pledged not to work with their Israeli counterparts, an effort that those boycotting saw as misguided and self-deprecating. Among the clear repercussions is the exit of director Nadav Lapid this spring from the Marseille International Film Festival. (He is a sharp critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.) Meanwhile, earlier this month, the country’s right-wing culture minister promised to stop funding filmmakers who “defame Israel.”
