We are proud to write you today as the new co-CEOs of PEN America.
This is a moment of opportunity for PEN America, as an organization whose mission is to celebrate literature and the power of storytelling, and to defend free expression here in the U.S. and around the world. We are positioned to reassert the meaning and primacy of freedom of speech, and to offer an affirmative vision of what a culture of free expression for all truly looks like.
PEN America is unique in that it is not just a free speech organization and not just a literary organization — we are focused on the ways in which free expression unlocks the power of writers and literature. In a moment when there are such powerful efforts to divide and dehumanize, literature is the antidote.
PEN America is 104 years old this year, and this organization has been tried at many moments during its history. In just the last few years, we have faced pressures from many angles. It is our responsibility now to rise above the noise and focus on our work and our mission, even when doing so is hard, or complicated, and recognizing we may not always get it completely right.
Today, we are looking ahead and charting a new path. We know the task: We must lead a principled defense of free expression in this moment when it is under grave attack.
We are clear on our core principles. We believe that free expression is a universal human right and the bedrock of a free society. And we recognize that the willingness to defend a person’s right to engage in controversial speech is essential to a principled commitment to free expression. This includes defending people’s right to engage in speech that may be anathema to our personal or organizational values. As PEN America, we advance these principles in part because we also believe that free expression is essential to the creation of art and culture, and to ensuring writers are able to create, challenge, and provoke without fear.
While today the gravest threats to free expression may come from government, we also know we have more to do to address the threats to free expression coming from non-governmental sources, from the rise of AI and the consolidation of corporate media, to cultural boycotts that risk constraining open engagement and exchange here and abroad
We also know there are many within our community who feel silenced based on their faith, identity, or culture. We must ensure PEN America can speak for all those who feel silenced, and continue to be a home for all writers.
The threats to free expression in this moment are existential. The current U.S. administration is going directly after communities that are central to our work – the cultural sector, the press, higher education. We have seen powerful institutions obeying in advance or breaking under the pressure. PEN America isn’t going to do that on our watch. We will speak up, witness, and fight back.
Just this week, we brought a delegation of four prominent writers to Texas A&M University, an epicenter of censorship in higher education, to stand in solidarity with faculty, staff, and students fighting for academic freedom, and to create space for discourse and learning on issues that are fundamental to the preservation of our democratic society. It’s an example of the unique type of advocacy PEN America is able to do, and the ways in which writers can be powerful advocates and witnesses, and write the story of this time.
PEN America must be the place where we safeguard the ability to speak and write freely, but also where we renew our willingness to listen, our ability to disagree respectfully, and to ask questions, to be curious, and to understand. Stand with us as we write the next chapter of PEN America.
