On Thursday, January 11 at 4pm ET, T’ruah invites you to begin to disentangle your thoughts on Free Speech: The Gray Area. We are delighted to welcome as our guest Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, one of the leading organizations promoting the protection of free expression. Ms. Nossel will be in conversation with T’ruah’s CEO Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who has written and spoken on this topic for the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, Vox, and elsewhere.
For those of us who are critical of Israel’s government and committed to freedom of expression and who also have a legitimate fear of growing antisemitism, a central question has been where valid criticism of Israel ends and antisemitism begins. And when someone does say something antisemitic, what are the limits of legal protection?
Suzanne Nossel currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of PEN America, the leading human rights and free expression organization, and she is author of “Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All.” She oversaw groundbreaking work on free expression in Hong Kong and China, Myanmar, Eurasia, and the United States. She is a leading voice on free expression issues in the United States and globally, writing and being interviewed frequently for national and international media outlets.
Her prior career spanned government service and leadership roles in the corporate and nonprofit sectors. She has served as the Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. During the first term of the Obama Administration, Nossel served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, where she led U.S. engagement in the United Nations and multilateral institutions, on human rights and humanitarian issues. During the Clinton Administration, Nossel was Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where she was the lead negotiator in settling U.S. arrears to the world body. In 2021, Nossel was selected as a member of the Oversight Board, an independent body using human rights principles to adjudicate decisions on Facebook and Instagram.