PEN America Speaks: How We Defended and Celebrated Free Expression The Week of February 26

PEN America works tirelessly to defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture. Here are some of the latest ways PEN America is speaking out.

• CEO Suzanne Nossel wrote in Foreign Affairs that culture is not a sideshow to geopolitics, but rather a central arena with sweeping implications for international relations.
• PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) released a statement mourning the death of Palestinian artist Fathi Ghaben whose request for medical care wasn’t responded to by Israel.
• PEN America condemned protests at the University of California-Berkeley that turned violent, included antisemitic slurs and gestures, and led to the cancellation of a planned lecture with Ran Bar-Yoshafat, deputy director of the Kohelet Policy Forum, an Israeli think tank. 
• PEN America Florida Director Katie Blankenship wrote about the threat of Florida’s SB 266 and Regulation 2.016 on university centers supporting diversity and inclusion, citing the closure of the Intercultural Center, LGBTQ Center, Women’s Center, and Interfaith Center at the University of North Florida. 
• On PEN America’s educational censorship blog, Samantha LaFrance, manager of editorial projects for Free Expression, and Education, wrote about the legislative attempt in Wyoming to defund gender studies departments at the University of Wyoming and Alabama bill SB 129, described as the most restrictive educational gag order since Florida’s Stop WOKE Act. LaFrance and Madison Markham, program assistant for the Freedom to Read program, wrote about the three bills fueling book bans and censorship in K-12 schools. 
• PEN America called on the Supreme Court to protect the First Amendment against government overreach, arguing that Florida and Texas laws that seek to restrict social media platforms’ content moderation practices infringe upon the First Amendment and represent a concerning trend of government interference in public discourse.
•  PEN America condemned the two-and-a-half-year sentencing of Oleg Orlov, a Russian human rights defender and co-founder of the human rights organization Memorial. “This is a shameful verdict that attempts to stifle calls for peace, truth, and justice in Russia,” said Polina Sadovskaya, PEN America Director for Advocacy and Eurasia.
• PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) convened an Experts Meeting on Cultural Rights and Development to address the ongoing situation in Gaza. The coalition emphasized the unique ability of the cultural argument to engage new audiences.
• On the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, PEN America’s Freedom to Writer Center (FTWC) and Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) expressed their firm commitment to supporting Ukrainian artists, writers, and other culture professionals. 
• PEN America, the National Coalition Against Censorship, Read Freely Alabama, and EveryLibrary called on the Autauga-Prattville Library Board in Alabama to reverse its new policy prohibiting all children’s and young adult books related to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and relevant issues. 
• PEN America called on the University of Houston to reschedule a postponed talk by the internationally acclaimed artist Shahzia Sikander and display her accompanying short film at a campus art installation that has been the focus of weeks of pushback from anti-abortion advocacy groups.
• PEN America’s Disinformation and Community Engagement program is addressing the escalating threats of false information during the election year by focusing on community-level resilience. 

See previous PEN America updates