PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel on the battle over free speech and book banning

The Battles We Pick

Suzanne Nossel leads the US chapter of PEN, the international network of professional writers dedicated to promoting and protecting the basic right to freedom of expression. Suzanne's book on the subject is titled Dare to Speak: Defending Freedom of Speech for All. Recently she highlighted the broader global struggle between freedom and autocracy in a Foreign Affairs article on The Real Culture Wars. I asked Suzanne how we got here, how a society that had prided itself on commitment to democracy could have lost touch with those values. She pointed out all the ways the MAGA movement had prepared the battleground with relentless gaslighting.
We talked about schools, libraries, and efforts to ban books as a key battlefront in the struggle to preserve freedom. Top political strategists see the threat of book-banning as an issue that could help draw pro-democracy voters to the ballot box this November, and Suzanne shared PEN America's successes in defeating book bans. As she said, book-banners don't just keep books out of their kids hands, they block access to books for all kids. In our conversation, we discussed the particularly high stakes for gay, lesbian, and gender queer students who are often the target of harassment and abuse. (Your humble podcast host recently researched and wrote about such a battle in a local Iowa school district.)
Suzanne and I also talked about wider attempts to make school curriculum conform with ideological agendas. Digging deeper into the roots of the issue, Suzanne pointed to demographic trends and an increasingly diverse society that are motivating those resistant to change. And as Suzanne said in our conversation, the uncompromising winner-take-all political dynamic of our times has helped fuel the fire.