Suzanne Nossel, PEN America Leader, to Leave Embattled Organization

Suzanne Nossel, who has led the free expression group since 2013, is leaving after a year of intense criticism of its response to the war in Gaza.

Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of the free expression group PEN America, is leaving the organization, six months after escalating criticism of the organization’s response to the war in Gaza led to the cancellation of its literary awards and annual literary festival.

Nossel will become the president and chief executive of Freedom House, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that promotes democracy and human rights around the world. PEN America announced that it has elevated two current senior members of its leadership team, Summer Lopez and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, to serve as interim co-chief executives, effective immediately, with a national search for a permanent leader to follow.

Nossel, a Harvard-trained lawyer, took the helm at PEN America in 2013, after previously working at the U.S. State Department, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA. During her tenure, its membership increased to more than 4,500, while its annual revenue grew to about $25.8 million, up from $4.3 million.

The group, by far the largest of the national PEN International chapters worldwide, also expanded beyond its traditional focus on the literary world, starting initiatives relating to free speech on campus, online harassment, book bans and the spread of state laws restricting teaching on race, gender and other “divisive concepts.”

There have also been flare-ups of intense controversy within the group’s ranks. In 2015, when PEN America announced a decision to give a “freedom of expression courage award” to the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, six writers serving as table hosts withdrew from the annual gala, while more than 200 members signed a letter that criticized honoring a publication that many Muslims in France saw as racist and Islamophobic.

In the aftermath of that controversy, PEN America worked to diversify its offerings and its ranks, while also increasingly emphasizing that free speech is not just about defending the right to speak, but also dismantling barriers that prevent marginalized people from being heard.

But tensions exploded anew after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel ignited a war. Critics inside and outside the group charged PEN America with failing to adequately speak out about dire threats to Palestinian writers and cultural life posed by Israel’s devastating military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Many saw a sharp contrast with the group’s full-throated defense of Ukrainian writers after the 2022 Russian invasion.

There was a series of open letters signed by hundreds of writers harshly criticizing the group, accusing it of betraying its ideals and displaying a bias. There were calls for Nossel’s departure, with one letter accusing the group of “parroting” the Israeli government’s talking points and blasting what it described as her “longstanding commitments to Zionism, Islamophobia, and imperial wars in the Middle East.”

In late April, PEN America canceled its literary awards ceremony and then its annual World Voices Festival, after many participants withdrew in protest. The cancellations in turn prompted charges and countercharges of bullying and intimidating. Some PEN members accused critics of acting in an “authoritarian” spirit, while others argued that some of the criticism of Nossel, who is Jewish, had crossed a line into antisemitism.

The group’s gala, one of the more glamorous occasions on the New York literary calendar, went forward in May. But criticisms and staff departures continued. In July, more than 140 translators signed a petition calling for the group’s fund supporting literary translation, founded in 2003 with a gift of $730,000, to be transferred to another organization, saying that missteps by leadership had “devastated the PEN brand.”

In a response, PEN America said that the letter included “baseless” claims about the administration of the fund, while also repeating “deeply offensive, conspiratorial and unfounded personal attacks” on Nossel.

Nossel will take the helm at Freedom House in January. In a news release, Jane Harman, a former Democratic representative from California and a co-chair of the organization’s board, called Nossel “a battle-tested leader known for her vision, drive and willingness to stand up for principle.”

In an interview shortly after the announcement, Nossel said the job was a way of “staying in the fight and bringing it to a new level.”

“Freedom House is an incredibly potent advocate for the rights of dissidents, independent thinkers, and political freedom all over the world, which are issues close to my heart and close to the heart of PEN,” she said. The group’s annual flagship report recently concluded that “flawed elections and armed conflict” had contributed to the 18th consecutive year of “democratic decline” around the world.

The past year at PEN America, Nossel said, had been difficult. “The literary community is sharply divided at this time, as are many other sectors of society,” she said.

Asked about the lessons of the past year of controversy, she said, “Hold on to your principles, and keep reasoned dialogue alive.”

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