After just seven months in the role, the president of one of the foremost US literary organisations resigned last week over what he described as the unfair treatment of Palestinians compared to Israelis and Jewish Americans.
Dinaw Mengestu, a celebrated Ethiopian-American novelist, exited the top job at Pen America on Thursday after the group published a report about the emotional toll on Israeli and Jewish-American writers after the fallout from Israel's nearly three-year-long genocide in Gaza.
Many reported losing jobs or career opportunities.
Mengestu wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday that "it is not about different opinions" or "different experiences", but rather "PEN America's ongoing failure to defend free expression fairly and equitably", as it keeps producing work that "supports suppression through bigotry and indifference".
That suppression, he described, comes from undermining the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he maintained is also a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
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