An Open Letter to the Members of PEN America

I write as an independent radio journalist who, for decades, has produced and hosted Building Bridges and Equal Rights & Justice, nationally syndicated public affairs programs examining labor, human rights, civil liberties, and international justice. I am a co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Media Defense Network, a coalition dedicated to defending political expression, independent journalism, and the rights of those targeted for their speech and advocacy; a longtime anti-poverty attorney; and a member of Labor for Palestine. It is from those commitments to human rights, freedom of expression, and international law that I offer the following response to PEN America’s position on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

PEN America, BDS, and the Meaning of Moral Responsibility

PEN America recently circulated the below attached letter to its membership defending its long-standing refusal to endorse the Palestinian-led BDS movement, even while acknowledging that genocide is taking place in Gaza. The organization argues that it vigorously defends the constitutional right to engage in boycotts but opposes cultural and academic boycotts as a matter of institutional principle.

That position deserves careful scrutiny. Throughout history, boycott has been among humanity’s most powerful nonviolent instruments for confronting colonialism, apartheid, racial oppression, and state violence. From the American Revolution to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, from the United Farm Workers grape boycott to the international campaign that helped bring down apartheid South Africa, collective economic and cultural withdrawal has never represented an assault on free expression. It has been one of its highest democratic expressions.

Today, as Palestinians endure what PEN itself acknowledges is genocide—amid the continuing devastation of Gaza, the accelerating ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the destruction of hospitals, universities, libraries, and cultural institutions, the imprisonment of writers, journalists, physicians, and humanitarian workers, and the detention of medical professionals such as Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya—the refusal to support the principal nonviolent strategy called for by an overwhelming coalition of Palestinian civil society is not neutrality. It is a political choice with profound moral consequences.

The response below is offered in that spirit—not to discourage debate, but to challenge PEN America’s position and to ask whether an organization dedicated to writers, literature, and freedom of expression can acknowledge genocide while rejecting the most significant nonviolent campaign designed to end it.

Free Expression Without Accountability Is Not Neutrality

Your letter seeks to portray PEN America as occupying principled middle ground—defending the right to boycott while refusing to endorse the BDS movement itself. History teaches a different lesson. There are moments when neutrality in the face of systematic oppression is not neutrality at all. It is political accommodation.

Your opposition to cultural and academic boycotts of Israel, while simultaneously acknowledging that Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza, presents a contradiction that cannot be reconciled. If, as you now write, “we continue to believe that what has happened in Gaza is a genocide,” then what meaningful, nonviolent instrument of international action do you propose to help stop it?

Boycott has never been an assault on free expression. It is one of history’s most effective forms of democratic expression. The American colonists boycotted British goods. The Montgomery Bus Boycott became a defining chapter of the Civil Rights Movement. The United Farm Workers organized the grape boycott. International sanctions and cultural isolation became indispensable in helping dismantle apartheid South Africa.

Boycott has never been an assault on free expression. It is one of history’s most effective forms of democratic expression.

The Palestinian call for BDS belongs squarely within this long tradition of organized, nonviolent resistance. Launched in 2005 by an overwhelming coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations, BDS calls upon the world to employ peaceful economic, cultural, and institutional pressure until Palestinians enjoy the rights guaranteed under international law. This is not censorship. It is conscience.

History also teaches another lesson. Genocide is rarely confined to mass killing alone. The destruction of a people has repeatedly involved forced displacement, starvation, destruction of homes, schools, universities, libraries, hospitals, religious institutions, and the erasure of language, memory, and culture. The Indigenous peoples of North America endured centuries of dispossession, forced removals, cultural destruction, and attempts to erase entire nations from history. The Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and other genocides remind us that the destruction of culture is inseparable from the destruction of human life.

Today, Gaza’s universities have been devastated. Libraries, archives, museums, theaters, schools, and cultural centers have been destroyed. Journalists, poets, professors, physicians, and humanitarian workers have been killed. Medical personnel have been detained, disappeared, and, according to numerous reports, subjected to abuse while carrying out their humanitarian obligations. Among the most emblematic cases is that of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, whose detention has drawn widespread concern from medical and human rights advocates. His case symbolizes a broader assault on healthcare workers and the protection that international humanitarian law is intended to provide.

If PEN America truly believes genocide is occurring, where is its sustained campaign demanding the freedom of detained writers, scholars, journalists, physicians, humanitarian workers, and other civilians held without due process? Where is the organized international effort calling for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya and all those imprisoned because they sought to heal, document, educate, or bear witness?

Humanitarian relief cannot replace political accountability.

Publishing reports after devastation has occurred cannot substitute for mobilizing every available peaceful means to prevent it. Nor is the historical comparison merely abstract. The Warsaw Ghetto did not need expressions of concern. It needed solidarity. Resistance movements confronting annihilation have never principally required sympathetic observers; they have required allies prepared to take risks alongside them.

Palestinians today do not simply need charity. They need allies willing to support peaceful mechanisms capable of imposing consequences upon a state that your own organization now acknowledges is committing genocide. That is precisely what BDS represents. You distinguish between defending the legal right to boycott and refusing to support the boycott itself. Legally, that distinction exists. Morally, it collapses.

You distinguish between defending the legal right to boycott and refusing to support the boycott itself. Legally, that distinction exists. Morally, it collapses.

Had PEN existed during South African apartheid, would it likewise have defended the legal right to boycott while opposing the anti-apartheid boycott itself in the name of preserving cultural dialogue? History would not have regarded such a position as principled neutrality. It would have regarded it as accommodation.

Your humanitarian assistance to Palestinian writers, your documentation of cultural destruction, your legal defense of pro-Palestinian speech, and your acknowledgment that genocide is taking place are important – yet they remain fundamentally incomplete if they stop short of endorsing the principal nonviolent strategy requested by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society.

Humanitarian relief cannot replace political accountability. One cannot document the destruction of a people’s culture while opposing peaceful collective action designed to stop its destruction. Nor should accountability depend upon nationality, religion, or ethnicity. Any writer, intellectual, or public figure—Israeli or otherwise—who rejects peaceful forms of accountability while remaining silent about, minimizing, or defending the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the continuing devastation of Gaza, or the denial of Palestinian rights should expect rigorous moral and political criticism. Such criticism is not an attack on identity; it is a response to public positions taken in the face of extraordinary human suffering.

Culture has never existed outside politics. Apartheid South Africa understood that. Colonial empires understood that. The struggle for civil rights in the United States understood that. The purpose of boycott is not to silence ideas. It is to withdraw legitimacy from institutions complicit in oppression until justice becomes unavoidable.

PEN America rightly condemns government attempts to criminalize BDS. But by continuing to reject the movement itself—even while acknowledging genocide—it risks lending legitimacy to the very structures of impunity its own reporting exposes. That is not principled consistency. It is political capitulation. History will remember who defended dialogue. It will also remember who defended meaningful action.

Governments throughout history have relied upon the normalization provided by cultural institutions to soften international condemnation. Apartheid South Africa understood this well. Military dictatorships understood this. Colonial powers understood this.

Culture is never politically neutral. Neither is refusing to withdraw it. Many of the world’s leading intellectuals recognized that there are moments when solidarity requires more than witnessing. It requires collective refusal. The irony is especially striking for an organization devoted to writers. Writers have historically stood at the forefront of boycott campaigns against tyranny: James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Arundhati Roy, Desmond Tutu. Few today would argue that artists should have continued performing at Sun City while Nelson Mandela remained imprisoned. Few defend the claim that cultural exchange should have proceeded as though apartheid did not exist. History judged those boycotts not as censorship but as moral resistance

The lesson of South Africa, the Civil Rights Movement, Indigenous struggles against colonization, and every successful campaign of nonviolent resistance is unmistakable. Boycott is not the enemy of free expression. Boycott is one of free expression’s highest democratic forms. If PEN America truly believes genocide is taking place, the question remains unavoidable:

If not BDS, what peaceful mechanism do you propose that is capable of stopping it?

History—and the people of Palestine—deserve an answer.

Mimi Rosenberg, Esq., producer/host Building Bridges & Equal Rights & Justice radio productions, co-founder Ida B. Wells Media Defense Network

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PEN America’s Letter to Its Membership

The following is the text of the letter circulated by PEN America that prompted my response.

July 15, 2026

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Dear Mimi,

As the leaders of PEN America, we know that much of our work about free expression will provoke strong feelings, often from every direction. That’s the price of doing this work honestly, and it’s one we’ve always been proud to pay.

When we came into these roles in February, we said we would lead this organization in a principled defense of free expression. We also acknowledged that “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.”

We meant what we said. Last week we published “A Silent Moratorium,” a piece documenting the stories of Israeli and Jewish writers who have experienced isolation and exclusion from literary life over the last several years. When we hear from writers in our community who feel unable to write freely and without fear, we won’t let fear of controversy stop us from telling their stories.

We are proud to have published this piece, and we are proud that it sits within a broader body of work to defend and uplift the stories of writers across a range of perspectives, identities, and backgrounds.

In response to some misrepresentation of our work that has been circulating since we published this piece, we want to set the record straight regarding a few areas of our work and talk about what this organization does.

Start with the question of boycotts, PEN America first published its position opposing cultural and academic boycotts on its website in 2007. We’ve also ardently opposed and advocated against unconstitutional legislative and statutory efforts to suppress the right to engage in boycotts. This is not contradictory. We believe part of our unique role is to protect the legal right to free speech vigorously, while also considering what it takes to build a broader culture of free expression.

When government attempts to restrict the right to boycott, we speak out. When Texas and Arkansas passed laws requiring government contractors to sign pledges disavowing any boycott of Israel before they could get paid, we spoke out against both. When a federal appeals court upheld one of those laws in 2022, we said plainly that the ruling “drastically undermines constitutionally protected freedoms.” We’ve criticized the U.S. and Israeli governments alike when they’ve detained, barred entry, or deported people over boycott advocacy or criticism of Israel’s government.

We’ve also spent a decade defending all voices on campuses, including students and faculty organizing for Palestinian rights or facing discipline for their speech critical of Israel. We oppose bills that use vague “promotion of terrorism” language as cover to chill pro-Palestinian speech, such as recently passed in Florida. Since October 2023, we’ve put out dozens of statements specifically addressing the suppression of pro-Palestinian speech in this country. Since early 2025, we have been part of eight amicus briefs in important First Amendment cases against the Trump administration to protect the rights of faculty and students expressing pro-Palestinian speech, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk.

In the past two years, PEN America directed half a million dollars in direct emergency support to Palestinian writers and artists in Gaza and in exile, including helping families relocate to safety–a level of relief we have not provided in response to any other conflict in our history. We published a report on the Israeli military’s destruction of cultural life and heritage in Gaza, built on interviews with Palestinian writers, artists, and cultural workers. We’ve translated and published the work of Palestinian writers in Gaza and elevated the voices of Palestinian writers calling for the preservation of their culture. We have said plainly, and continue to believe, that what has happened in Gaza is a genocide.

We don’t say any of this to shut off criticism or discourage open and respectful debate. There is no question that this organization’s work over the past decade, on one of the most contested conflicts of our time, has not been perfect. We’ve faced pressures and criticisms from every direction, and we intend to keep taking constructive criticism seriously rather than running from it. Our door is always open to engage with any members of our community who wish to be in conversation with us. As leaders of an organization dedicated to dialogue and open discourse, we are committed to hearing critique and debate, and to always driving this organization to be better. We will also hold firm to this organization’s mission and purpose, and to our commitment to a principled defense of free expression.

There is urgent work to be done in service of that mission, and we remain committed to carrying it forward.

Read coverage in The New York Times and find more details about this work on our website.