PEN America’s new president is no free speech champion

Column for UnHerd that I never shared here. Relevant again because PEN is having a rough time lately in ways that were perhaps predictable and perhaps avoidable:

In an interview with the New York Times, Boylan said: “Look, people are going to see in me an LGBTQ advocate, but that’s not my job as PEN president. My job is to fight for freedom of speech for everybody, including people I disagree with.” 

This is, indeed, what the role calls for. But is Boylan the right person for the job? 

Boylan’s own record on freedom of expression is a rather spotty one. In July 2020, the activist was a signatory of the Harper’s Magazine “Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, which declared that “[t]he free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted” and warned that a creeping culture of “censoriousness […] will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.” In short, a promising outing for a future president of PEN America. 

Unfortunately, the NYT columnist withdrew as a signatory just a few hours after the letter’s publication, tweeting an apology that was more grovelling than what Boylan acknowledged was a “well-meaning, if vague, message” ought to warrant. It turns out the new PEN president felt uncomfortable sharing space with certain other signatories, among them the author J.K. Rowling. “I did not know who else had signed that letter […] I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company,” Boylan tweeted. “The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.” 

In other words, our new free speech champion “read the room” and slunk away from a common-sense position supporting free and open debate.