“If we can’t trust ourselves as a culture to accommodate ideas we don’t like,” declared author Salman Rushdie at the Library of Congress in 2023, “then our ideas lose their value as well, because they become authoritarian.”
This is a notion many Americans have long taken for granted. In America, unlike much of the world, the free exchange of ideas has been a norm. It’s made for uneasy and tense clashes between Americans with wildly different views of the world, made only worse in recent years thanks to social media. But even still, America is a place where people can reliably access a broad spectrum of views if they wish.
This is as it should be.
Yet Rushdie himself has been living testament to the fact that not everyone values freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of thought.
Three years ago, a religious fanatic tried to assassinate Rushdie in New York. The attempted assassin was following up on the 1989 fatwa by then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for the killing of Rushdie for the crime of writing a novel, “The Satanic Verses.”
Indeed, fanatics actually attacked bookstores across the west, including in Berkeley, in response to the controversy, with explosives and Molotov cocktails.
Rushdie, for his part, has bravely carried on his life and continued putting out books, continued making public appearances and has continued to speak his mind.
Accordingly, it’s no surprise Claremont McKenna College announced that Rushdie would be the school’s 2026 commencement speaker.
Rushdie knows a thing or two about the importance of ideas, their examination and their free exchange.
Unfortunately, some supposed spokespeople for the Islamic community have taken to attacking Rushdie’s scheduled address.
They cite, as one basis for their complaint, an interview he did last year in which he said he’s long supported a Palestinian state and that any normal person would be shocked by what’s going on in Gaza but that “if there were a Palestinian state now, it would be run by Hamas and we would have a Taliban-like state. A satellite state of Iran. Is this what the progressive movements of the western left want to create?”
The horror, a nuanced take on a complicated conflict.
Rushdie isn’t perfect, no one is, but he makes perfect sense as a commencement speaker. If people want to complain, fine, but no legitimate institution in its right mind should rescind an invitation to Salman Rushdie.
What he has to say is worth hearing.
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