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Gal Beckerman
The Atlantic
On Thursday morning, PEN America, the free-speech organization, posted an article detailing the “isolation and exclusion” many Israeli and Jewish writers have felt since October 7, 2023. The authors describe being blacklisted at publishing houses, boycotted by activists, pressured to downplay their Jewishness, and called out in online witch hunts including a viral crowdsourced spreadsheet that asked: “Is your fav writer a Zionist???”
Drawing attention to such suppression would seem to fall squarely within the mandate of this watchdog group, whose motto is “the freedom to write.” And yet, publication of the article—which makes no policy recommendations and is written in a mournful, rather than accusatory, tone—was enough to make PEN America’s president, the novelist Dinaw Mengestu, decide to resign in protest within hours.
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Florida’s war against woke indoctrination has hit a speedbump. On July 7, a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s injunction against the Stop WOKE Act, the state’s attempt to ban public university employees from inculcating trendy beliefs about racial superiority and privilege.
Yale University is discussing a potential voluntary resolution with the Department of Justice over allegedly discriminatory admissions practices, President Maurie McInnis announced Monday.
The recent report on the state of scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has renewed the debate over the internal politicization of academe. As one of its authors (speaking only for myself), I find the report relatively tepid.
