2023 PEN World Voices Festival: ARTHUR MILLER LECTURE: TA-NEHISI COATES

PEN America’s annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture will be delivered by MacArthur Fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the United States seemed caught in a reckoning with the legacies of slavery and racial inequity. Yet, the backlash to critical discussions of America’s history and the history of African Americans was swift, with President Trump introducing an Executive Order in September 2020 barring discussion of so-called ‘divisive-concepts’ in government trainings and other settings. Beginning in January 2021, state legislatures took up the charge, continuing the campaign against curricula and ideas labeled “critical race theory,” and The New York Times’ 1619 Project. In the years since, we have seen a dramatic rise in efforts to ban books, and particularly the very books that have long fought for a place on the shelf - books by African Americans and authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors and women. PEN America’s Banned in the USA report found that 40% of banned books in the 2021-2022 school year featured a protagonist or secondary character of color.
In the Festival’s keynote lecture, Coates will discuss this moment of attempts to erase African American history and black intellectual thought in the context of the broader attacks on free speech and free expression. He will explore the historically cyclical nature of these backlashes, the power structures fortified by the assault on the free exchange of ideas and thoughts, and identify the stakes of the curtailment of free expression. After the lecture, Coates will be interviewed by Professor David Blight (Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom; American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory) with an audience Q&A to follow.

[@justmyopinion9883]

Thank you for sharing this lecture. Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite writers.

[@jodiann_burey]

Coates has so much respect for his students and colleagues.

[@gkcarpenter98]

thanks for posting this conversation

[@sunshinedenney8695]

TY 🌸✌️

[@slb290370]

Thank you for sharing - what a great lecture by Ta-Nehisi Coates and time of reflection on our history - a small query I was trying to see if there was a list of the books they mention - didn't always make out the names of the authors or the titles. Blessings to the team that made all this event possible and sharing it with us!

[@dhatroit]

And min 34:00 on free speech in safe environments

[@atwarwithdust]

Would like to hear Matt Taibbi and Ta-Nehisi Coates debate Herbert Marcuse's 'Repressive Tolerance'.

[@JPW3]

Maybe they could discuss Douglass?

[@presterjohn1697]

Ming blowing how this guy just figured out Israel-Palestine in 2023. Unreal

[@dhatroit]

Min 25:00 the answer to free speech is more speech? Well, it's about power....

[@throughmyeyes9940]

hey Coates, it's President Trump

[@tedwards9461]

No, it's soon to be inmate trump.

[@tnp1047]

Free speech implies otherwise.