PANEL:

Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America Suzanne Nossel is Chief Executive Officer at PEN America. Prior to joining PEN America, she served as the Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. She has served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, leading US engagement in the UN and multilateral institutions on human right issues, and in the Clinton Administration as Deputy to the US Ambassador for UN Management and Reform. Nossel coined the term “Smart Power,” which was the title of a 2004 article she published in Foreign Affairs Magazine and later became the theme of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure in office. She is a featured columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and has published op-eds in The New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times, as well as scholarly articles in Foreign Affairs, Dissent, and Democracy, among others. Nossel serves on the Board of Directors of the Tides Foundation. She is a former senior fellow at the Century Foundation, the Center for American Progress, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Nossel is a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Suzanne Nossel’s Socials:
Twitter: @SuzanneNossel
Instagram: @suzanne.nossel

Organization’s Socials

Twitter: @PENamerica
Instagram: @penamerica
Facebook: @PENamerica

Randall Kennedy,
Professor at Harvard Law School

Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina. For his education he attended St. Albans School, Princeton University, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States. Awarded the 1998 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime, and the Law, Mr. Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications. His other books are For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law (2013), The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (2011), Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008), Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (2003), and Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002). A member of the American Law Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, Mr. Kennedy is also a Trustee emeritus of Princeton University

RESOURCES:

Book:

• Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All | Suzanne Nossel

ACTIONS

• Action 1: PEN America works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.

  • Join PEN America here: Defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture. pen.org/membership/

  • Show your support of PEN America by donating here: pen.org/more-ways-to-give/

  • Learn more about how to advocate for free expression at pen.org

• Action 2: Become an ambassador for the Campaign for Equal Dignity and invite 10 friends to join the Campaign today.Some sample text to share includes:

  • We all deserve #EqualDignity: access to health security, quality education, voting rights, economic stability, & justice for all. These are our civil & human rights.

  • One person, organization, or family cannot define what #EqualDignity is for us all. We believe it is access to health security, quality education, voting rights, economic stability, & justice for all.

  • Join our effort to reaffirm our belief of #EqualDignity & add your own beliefs too. A nation built by the people should have rights #ForThePeople.