Once again, chaos has enveloped PEN America, the non-profit dedicated to free expression and literature. Dinaw Mengestu, the organization’s president, resigned earlier this month over an article PEN published that detailed its opposition to cultural boycotts. The article argued that Israeli and Jewish authors have experienced harassment and backlash since the October 7 attacks in 2023 and the ensuing war in Gaza, declaring that pro-Palestine boycott movements such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) “threaten the free expression rights not only of those associated with the boycotted institutions but also of those in the countries where the boycott is practiced”. In an interview announcing his resignation, Mengestu said this argument was “unethical” because it could portray BDS as discriminatory instead of another form of protected political speech.

Mengestu is right that BDS should be viewed as protected speech: a non-violent attempt to bring about change in Israel. As a Jewish writer who is supportive of Palestinian rights and deeply critical of Israel, I welcome any defense of BDS. But it can be true that cultural boycotts of Israel — and the writers and organizations impacted — are defensible as free speech and that they are damaging from an artistic standpoint.

To further our literary culture, we need ideological diversity. A writer can’t be afraid of certain subject matter or arguments, and their politics should not determine how the art they create is ultimately assessed. We understood this well enough in the 20th century: audiences and the critical establishment could promote writers of all ideological gradations. A celebrated novelist or poet might have politics that the Left found deplorable. For instance, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were reactionaries, while Virginia Woolf trafficked in antisemitic tropes.

An obvious problem with enforcing cultural boycotts is that those targeted for their political views are still capable of creating great art. At the same time, somebody with more “acceptable” beliefs might be a tedious, unoriginal writer. No political ideology has a monopoly on talent. Politics and art do not have to remain separate — a writer is free to be an activist — but they should not be wholly intertwined. After all, activism isn’t art but propaganda.

PEN, then, does have a right to fret about BDS. The organization’s problem is that it seems to spend far less time on the plight of Palestinian and Arab artists, who are subject to discrimination by pro-Israel cultural institutions. If PEN defended equally the free expression of all cultures and ideologies, there would be less backlash today. It would be recognized, like the 20th-century version of the ACLU, as an organization with a consistent set of principles. It isn’t.

In our Manichean times, the value of free expression isn’t terribly popular. Nor does it win any more converts when it’s applied to artists. No artist should be punished for their nationality alone, and no work of art should be ignored or censured because its creator holds politics that are deemed to be unacceptable. If they are, our culture will be strangled.

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Ross Barkan is an UnHerd columnist and a regular contributor to New York and The New York Times Magazine.

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