Dinaw Mengestu in his office at Bard College on January 8, 2026. Mengestu, a creative writing professor and novelist was named president of PEN America in December 2025. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

The president of an organization dedicated to protecting free speech announced his resignation after the nonprofit group published an article about Jewish and Israeli writers being blacklisted and facing isolation due to cultural boycotts around the world.

On July 9, PEN America published an article on its website that described how Israeli and Jewish writers are experiencing “rising isolation and exclusion” in the aftermath of the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. More than 30 Israeli and Jewish writers and literary professionals spoke to PEN America about being rejected by the literary world, “a widening cultural isolation” as well as “rising hostility and exclusion” both domestically and internationally, according to the authors of the PEN America piece.

The article, titled “A Silent Moratorium,” was written by PEN America’s Editorial Director Lisa Tolin, who formerly worked for NBC News and the Associated Press; PEN America’s Chief Communications Officer Geraldine Baum, a Pulitzer Prize winner and veteran of The Los Angeles Times and Newsday; and PEN America consultant Malka Margolies.

Within hours after the article was published, Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu resigned as president of PEN America, a position he has held since December 2025. Explaining his decision to The Atlantic, he slammed PEN America criticizing boycott efforts against Israeli and Jewish figures and not defending its supporters. “It’s the first amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told The Atlantic. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”

In a lengthy Instagram post on Monday, Mengestu claimed the PEN America article is “about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech” and future defended boycott efforts. He concluded by saying, “I will do everything I can now to help make something better.”

Writers Against the War on Gaza applauded Mengestu’s “principled decision” to resign while others criticized his move this week.

“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” wrote Jewish author David Zweig in a post on X. “Why not blacklist authors from his birthplace, Ethiopia? Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record. What about Russian, Chinese, or Syrian writers? Nope. According to Dinaw Mengestu everyone is fine unless they happen to be from Israel.”

“Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” said The Anti-Defamation League. “That principle must apply consistently to everyone, especially at a moment when Jewish and Israeli voices are facing escalating efforts to boycott, isolate, and silence them – a trend ADL is tracking across cultural, academic and civic spaces. Walking away over research documenting that reality sends a chilling message.“

The authors of the July 9 article by PEN America said the piece shares the stories of Jewish and Israeli writers “who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.”

“They describe an environment that has impacted their reputations and livelihoods, led people to self-censor, and created an overall chilling of their ability to write and create freely,” the authors wrote. “This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all.”

The article also noted the “dire consequences” that Palestinian and pro-Palestinian writers and artists have experienced since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, including “arrests, harassment and threats, deportation attempts, and detention.”

Jewish author Sarah Schulman, who is a supporter for the Boycott, Divestment and Sactions (BDS) movement defended Mengestu in a Facebook post.

“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” she wrote. She described the PEN America article as “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces about how ‘Jewish and Israeli’ writers are being discriminated against,” and said if the organization “wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”

Mengestu noted that the same day PEN America published the July 9 article, it also amended a statement on its website about boycotts. The organization now clarified that it does defend the rights of people who want to engage in boycotts.

“PEN America also recognizes that participating in or advocating for boycotts is an exercise of free expression and protected political speech,” the new statement reads. ”We defend the rights of writers and academics who engage in or advocate for or against cultural and academic boycotts to be protected from retaliatory efforts to silence their voices or otherwise punish them. We see no contradiction between opposing boycotts ourselves, and defending the right of others to engage in them.

PEN America’s former Jewish president Suzanne Nossel resigned in October 2024 following criticism over the organization’s alleged failure to speak out against threats targeting Palestinian writers during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.