James Tager, JD, is the Director of Research at PEN America. He oversees PEN America’s research products, including its full-length research reports.
Tager has edited or contributed to over two dozen PEN America reports on issues related to free expression, literature, civil rights, and human rights. He has served as sole or co-author on over a dozen PEN America reports.
Tager regularly provides commentary for news media on censorship, book banning, and contemporary threats against freedom of expression. His commentary has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, and other national and international outlets.
Tager’s media appearances include podcast appearances on The Council for Foreign Relations’ Why It Matters, Axios, The Bulwark, Restricted Reading, and Harvard Kennedy School’s Voir Dire. Tager also lectures on these topics, having spoken at Harvard Law School, Fordham Law School, University of Wisconsin-Stout, and elsewhere.
Tager previously led PEN America’s research and campaigning efforts on freedom of expression issues related to the People’s Republic of China, including advocacy for imprisoned writers. In addition to his research, he led PEN America’s involvement in advocacy campaigns including the #FreeLiuXia campaign and other efforts. His Made in Hollywood report is consistently cited as a leading resource on the issue of Chinese governmental influence in Hollywood. Tager is an adjunct professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies, where he co-teaches a class on US-China relations.
Tager’s research interests also include prison book bans. His position paper Literature Locked Up is responsible for identifying “secure vendor” programs as a content-neutral type of book ban, and remains a cited resource for librarians, free expression advocates, and prison-reform advocates. Tager is a founding member of the Coalition for Carceral Access to Literature and Learning, or CALL.
Tager previously worked with the International Commission of Jurists—Asia & Pacific Program; first as a Satter Human Rights Fellow, a one-year fellowship designed to support human rights defense in response to atrocities or widespread human rights abuses; and subsequently as an International Associate Legal Advisor. Before that, he was a 2013-2014 Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellow, researching civil society responses to the developing human rights framework within ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations). He has lived and worked in Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia.
A lifelong reader of speculative fiction, Tager is also a published fiction writer, with short stories in Two Cities Review, Gathering Storm Magazine, and Third Flatiron Publishing’s After the Gold Rush anthology.
Tager holds a BA from Duke University and a JD from Harvard Law School.
PEN America Reports
The Florida Effect: How the Sunshine State is Driving the Conservative Agenda on Free Expression (2023)
The California Effect: How the Golden State is Driving the Progressive Agenda on Free Expression (2023)
Booklash: Literary Freedom, Online Outrage, and the Language of Harm (2023)
Reading Between the Lines: Race, Equity, and Book Publishing (2022)
Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach (2021)
Splintered Speech: Digital Sovereignty and the Future of the Internet (2021)
Closing Ranks: State Legislators Deepen Assaults on the Right to Protest (2021)
Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing: The US Film Industry and Chinese Government Influence (2020)
Arresting Dissent: Legislative Restrictions on the Right to Protest (2020)
Losing the News: The Decimation of Local Journalism and the Search for Solutions (2019)
Literature Locked Up: How Prison Book Restriction Policies Constitute the Nation’s Largest Book Ban (2019)
Forbidden Feeds: Government Controls on Social Media in China (2018)
Trump the Truth: Free Expression in the President’s First 100 Days (2017)
Writing on the Wall: Disappeared Booksellers and Free Expression in Hong Kong (2016)
Opinion and Commentary
If Project 2025 is enacted, politicians censoring library books will go nationwide
Kansas City Star, September 2024
How Tennessee’s Republicans mirror China’s authoritarians
The Daily Beast, April 2023
Missouri’s new effort to punish libraries is vindictive and harmful
Missouri Independent, April 2023
Peng Shuai’s new statements fit a pattern in China. The world mustn’t fall for it
Washington Post, December 2021
Amid coronavirus pandemic, Chinese persecution of critics hasn’t stopped—it has worsened
Foreign Policy, April 2020
In Hong Kong, the freedom to publish is under attack
Foreign Policy, June 2019
“They killed him: Denial of medical care in China and the literary conscience,” in The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate, Potomac Books, 2017