After Sex Scandal, No 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, Panel Says

The Swedish panel that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature will not name a laureate this year, it said on Friday — not because of a shortage of deserving writers, but because of the infighting and public outrage that have engulfed the group over a sex abuse scandal.

The Swedish Academy said it would postpone the 2018 award until next year, when it will name two winners, making this the first year since World War II that the panel has decided not to bestow one of the world’s most revered cultural honors. The academy is involved only in the literature award, so other Nobel Prizes are unaffected.

Though the prizes should be awarded annually, they can be postponed or skipped “when a situation in a prize-awarding institution arises that is so serious that a prize decision will not be perceived as credible,” the Nobel Foundation, which governs all of the prizes, said in a statement posted online Friday morning. “The crisis in the Swedish Academy has adversely affected the Nobel Prize. Their decision underscores the seriousness of the situation and will help safeguard the long-term reputation of the Nobel Prize.”

The announcement that there will be no 2018 prize is the latest in a series of blows to the academy that, occurring in the glare of the #MeToo movement, have drawn worldwide attention.

Last November, a Swedish newspaper reported that 18 women said they had been sexually assaulted or harassed by Jean-Claude Arnault, who is closely tied to the Swedish Academy and is accused of using his stature in the arts world to try to coerce women into sex. He has denied the allegations.

Mr. Arnault, a photographer, is married to a member of the academy, Katarina Frostenson; is a close friend to other members; and is co-owner, with Ms. Frostenson, of Forum, a cultural center in Stockholm that received funding from the academy. Some events were said to have occurred at academy-owned properties in Stockholm and Paris, and at least one woman’s complaints to the academy about Mr. Arnault more than 20 years ago were rebuffed.

The crisis escalated when the academy dismissed another member, Sara Danius, as its permanent secretary, the group’s chief official — the first woman to hold that post — though she remained part of the panel. She had severed the group’s ties with Mr. Arnault and Forum, and commissioned an investigation of the academy from a law firm.

Her demotion prompted mass protests by critics who said that a woman had suffered for the misdeeds of a man, and that Ms. Danius had been punished for trying to introduce openness and accountability to a group that preferred to close ranks.

Some of the academy’s 18 members resigned over Ms. Frostenson’s continued membership, and several more quit over the treatment of Ms. Danius. That has left the group with 10 active members — too few, under its rules, to elect new members.

But academy appointments are for life, and the organization’s rules do not provide for resignations; it considers those who have quit to remain members, albeit inactive, so they cannot be replaced.

That has prompted calls for King Carl XVI Gustaf — officially the academy’s patron, but normally not an active participant — to step in.