This was a disappointing development when it was announced, but fortunately, there appears to be a positive resolution.
In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American companies from publishing works by dissident writers in countries under sanction unless they first obtain U.S. government approval.
The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the First Amendment, means that books and other works banned by some totalitarian regimes cannot be published freely in the United States.
“It strikes me as very odd,” said Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University and former constitutional legal counsel to former presidents Reagan and Bush. “I think the government has an uphill struggle to justify this constitutionally.”
Several groups, led by the PEN American Center and including Arcade Publishing, have filed suit in U.S. District Court in New York seeking to overturn the regulations, which cover writers in Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea and, until recently, Iraq.
It was discouraging, to put it mildly, to see that the Bush administration would be so callous towards free expression. As Carpetbagger guest contributor Nili wrote in an email, “It’s another case of W: a) going back on decades of our role as a land of opportunity, b) stomping on free speech, c) demonstrating how little he cares about or is curious about other nations and cultures, d) all of the above.”
Whereas the U.S. has historically been a refuge for those who have been silenced elsewhere, this policy made it extremely difficult for publishers and dissident writers to reach an audience in a country with celebrated free speech rights.
There is, however, a happy ending to this story — the lawsuit challenging the administration’s policy has led to a reversal.
The Bush administration dropped restrictions on writers from Cuba, Iran and Sudan publishing original works in the U.S., after a Nobel laureate and publishers and authors groups filed lawsuits claiming the rules violated the First Amendment.
The regulations, part of trade embargoes intended to punish regimes at odds with Washington, had stymied Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, from publishing a memoir in the U.S., as well as publication of several academic works by Cuban scholars.
I guess these are the kind of Bush flip-flops we can celebrate.