PEN International, founded in London in 1921, is an organization of writers dedicated to the cause of free expression. Originally the title stood for Poets, Essayists, Novelists, but the group now includes every sort of littérateur, even humble magazine writers. We revere the organization’s heritage and acknowledge that in many parts of the world—think of China and Russia—PEN’s various affiliates have championed dissident writers at some risk.
At least one branch of PEN International, however—PEN America—has tended more and more to disgrace itself. There are for instance few places in the United States where the fundamental principles of free speech are more gravely threatened than on university campuses, but PEN America ties itself in knots in order to sound nuanced and balanced in the face of anti-First Amendment hooliganism. “Cries of ‘free speech,’ ” one PEN America report says, “have on occasion been used to refute or delegitimize protest and outrage—to dismiss the forms that speech takes and thereby avoid considering its substance. Yet protest and outrage, however infelicitously or unfamiliarly it may be expressed, must also be protected as free speech.” “Protest and outrage” are protected speech, but “cries of ‘free speech’ ” intended to “refute or delegitimize” them are not? Huh.
Similarly, when PEN America honored the French magazine Charlie Hebdo with its Freedom of Expression Courage Award in 2015, around 200 PEN members—including famed novelists Francine Prose and Michael Ondaatje—boycotted the ceremony and signed a petition protesting the award. Hebdo, recall, is the Paris-based satirical magazine attacked by Islamist terrorists in January 2015. Twelve people on the magazine’s premises were murdered. We won’t bother to explain the reasons for the boycott.
At last, though, the members of PEN America have discovered a cause they can get behind: the all-around badness of Donald Trump. The organization has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the president. The lawsuit, PEN America explains, “seeks to stop President Trump from using the machinery of government to retaliate or threaten reprisals against journalists and media outlets for coverage he dislikes.”
So scary have the president’s condemnations of the press been, the PEN America statement says, that “individual writers may think twice before publishing pieces or commentary that could put them in the White House’s crosshairs.” Really? That’s strange, because we are aware of many high-profile journalists and writers who wear disparagement by Trump as a badge of honor. In most quarters of the media with which we are familiar, it is a mark of high distinction to have been the subject of a Trump rant. Writers and journalists who fall afoul of, say, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping tend not to boast so openly—if they ever have a chance to.
One need not defend Trump’s boorish remonstrations about the media—“enemy of the people,” “fake news,” and so on—to find this all a bit rich. As we go to press, we’re searching for PEN America’s condemnations of the Obama administration for, among other things, surveilling Fox News reporter James Rosen and seizing the work and mobile phone records of Associated Press reporters. We haven’t found anything so far. Maybe we’ve just overlooked it.
