MBN’s early career professionals program

Dear Colleagues,

In 1933, British novelist H. G. Wells became president of PEN — originally P.E.N., an acronym for Poets, Essayists, and Novelists — the international writers group founded in London in 1922. What started as a dinner club for authors evolved into an international organization focused on free expression and human rights.

In 1933, PEN’s new president led a campaign against the burning of books in Germany. Wells reflected:

When Politics reaches up and assaults Literature and the liberty of human thought and expression, we have to take notice of Politics. If not, what will the P.E.N. Club become? A tourist agency — an organisation for introducing respectable writers to useful scenery — a special branch of the hotel industry?

MBN’s program for early career professionals hosted this week a discussion with Summer Lopez, interim Co-CEO of PEN America. The hybrid meeting included MBN colleagues along with foundation and think tank associates in Washington, LA, and New York. PEN’s work around the world is as relevant as ever.

You can get a sense of the conversation with Summer Lopez from the interview conducted by our colleague Aya. Look for it next week (I’m grateful to Aya and Alina for helping to organize these sessions).

Earlier this summer, MBN young professionals hosted James Glassman for a talk on tariffs. President Trump had a big tariff’s deadline today. The president has just announced new tariffs for every country around the world, underscoring his break with America’s long-standing trade policy.

Claude Weinber — who’s twice led the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Tel Aviv — was with our rising leaders recently for a wide-ranging conversation on Israeli politics. Yesterday, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff was with Prime Minister Netanyahu for talks focused on hostage negotiations and humanitarian aid for Gazans. Mr. Witkoff was visiting an aid site in Rafah today. The debate over Gaza’s woes deepens.

Later this month, Peter Skerry will offer perspective on America’s immigration debate. Martha Bayles will share views on today’s free speech controversies. Tom Melia from the MBN board — himself once with PEN — will talk to us about the history and evolution of America’s support for human rights and democracy movements around the world. And prize-winning journalist Guy Gugliotta will speak about his new book on the Reconstruction South and attempts in early years after the Civil War to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan.

We value history. We care about ideas. We’re always looking for ways to enrich our content. Speakers from our young professionals series are interviewed by Aya, translated into Arabic, and shared across MBN platforms.

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From the beginning, PEN focused on the unique role of literature. The original mandate went like this:

1. Literature, national though it be in origin, knows no frontiers, and should remain common currency between nations in spite of political or international upheavals.
2. In all circumstances then and particularly in time of war, works of art, the patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion.
3. Members of the P.E.N. Clubs should at all times use what influence they have in favour of good understanding and mutual respect between the nations.

It’s not a bad framework for today. The winner of the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) is Egyptian author Mohamed Samir Nada for his novel The Prayer of Anxiety. Colleague Rami brought to my attention that our associate Ibrahim Issa interviewed the Iraqi-born prize winner earlier this summer (though not for us). Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, Nada’s work — his third novel — is driven by perspectives of eight different characters amidst war and epidemic in a village in Upper Egypt. In the works from Nada: a next book set between Turkey, Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt between 1914 and 2013.

If you want to dig into PEN, the digitized records of English PEN and PEN International are with the University of Texas Austin. The records contain nearly a century’s worth of reports and correspondence reflecting historical trends and major events in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. I’ve been browsing. At a December 1966 meeting in London, American playwright Arthur Miller remarks that the Writers in Prison Committee, which “never lacks customers,” has indeed been busy.

If you want summer reading from around the time H.G. Wells led his campaign against Nazi book burning, try these:

Thomas Mann began writing Magic Mountain in 1912. It’s the story of young Hamburg engineer Hans Castorp, who goes to visit his tuberculosis-afflicted cousin Joachim Ziemssen at a clinic in Davos. Context: the run-up to Weimar Germany with the struggle between enlightenment values and nationalist-authoritarian sentiment intensifying.

Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz was the great novel of the doomed Weimar Republic. The book begins with the release of Franz Biberkopf from prison — where he has served time, the narrator tells us, for having done “some stupid stuff.” Franz is determined to get himself onto the straight and narrow. He’s an emotionally scarred veteran, crippled by a car accident, betrayed by friends. He’s soon stuck in the gritty Berlin underworld. Author Döblin was also a medical doctor focused on neurology and psychiatry.

Little Man, What Now? by Hans Fallada was published in 1932, the year before Hitler became to power. Fallada’s novel is the tale of exploitative businesses, social fragmentation, and fierce political and social rivalry. National socialism and communism were fighting for the German soul, each promising to rescue Germany from despair and decline. The story does not end well.

Next time, lighter fare. Next week — Thursday, August 7 at 12 noon — more about MBN’s next steps at a town hall meeting. As ever, my gratitude for your determination and perseverance.

My best, Jeff