Charlie Hebdo’s recently appointed editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard, and its film critic, Jean-Baptiste Thoret, visited the United States for the first time since the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris, which killed eight of their co-workers and four others. In advance of PEN American Center’s annual Literary Gala in New York—where Charlie Hebdo received the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Free Expression Courage Award—they joined PEN for a conversation about the challenges to free expression in France and Europe, the role of satire in open societies, the controversies that have surrounded Charlie Hebdo, and the tensions between respect for religious differences and protections for freedom of expression.
The panel also included the director of NYU’s Institute of French Studies, Ed Berenson; PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel; and journalist Maggy Donaldson.
