ANALYSIS: ‘This decision was his alone and completely beyond our control’
Why did Salman Rushdie, famed author of “The Satanic Verses” and radical Islam’s most famous heretic, abruptly bow out of speaking at Claremont McKenna College’s graduation ceremony—and did he make the right decision?
The answer to both questions depends on who you ask.
On May 13, college President Hiram Chodosh announced in an email to the campus community that Rushdie would no longer be the keynote speaker at the May 17 commencement ceremony.
“I write with news that Sir Salman Rushdie notified us yesterday of his decision to withdraw as our keynote commencement speaker,” Chodosh wrote in the email, a copy of which was obtained by The College Fix.
“This decision was his alone and completely beyond our control. We remain steadfast in our commitment to Sir Salman’s visit to CMC and have extended an open invitation to him to speak on our campus in the future.”
The Claremont Independent news outlet asked the president of The Lavin Agency, Rushdie’s speaker management group, for more context on the decision, but it declined to comment.
“Rushdie’s invitation [had been] met with backlash, primarily from the Claremont Colleges’ Muslim Student Association,” reported the Independent, a center-right student news outlet at the college, also known to lean slightly conservative.
“A number of Instagram posts and op-eds were published online debating the invitation, with members of the MSA also giving comment to local news.”
The sentencing of Rushdie’s attacker was scheduled one day before commencement as well and was expected to draw international attention, the Independent reported.
Rushdie had a fatwa issued against him in 1989 by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. He spent a decade in hiding and sparked a global controversy over free speech and religious sensitivities.
In August 2022, Rushdie was repeatedly stabbed at a lecture event in New York in his neck, chest, eye, and other areas. He survived but lost sight in one eye. The attacker, Hadi Matar, was convicted of attempted murder in February and sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison.
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Dhriti Jagadish, a student at Claremont McKenna who has reported extensively on the controversy for the Independent, told The College Fix in an email Tuesday the timing of the sentencing likely played a role in Rushdie’s decision.
“Without hearing from Rushdie himself, it is impossible to say why he withdrew; Rushdie may have caught wind of campus discourse and changed his mind, or he may have reconsidered after his attacker’s sentence was rescheduled for the day before commencement (a potential factor The Atlantic neglected to consider),” Jagadish said via email.
She said she believes reports in the Daily Beast and The Atlantic suggesting he was scared away by campus protestations may have missed the mark.
“It is not certain that Rushdie was ‘scared away’ (as the Daily Beast put it), as the dissent to Rushdie’s invitation has been quite civil, taking the form of posters, Instagram posts, emails to administration, and op-eds in campus newspapers,” she told The Fix.
She added the Muslim Student Association supported Rushdie being invited in a non-commencement forum, and he spoke at Claremont McKenna in 2006 without any reported incidents.
“While I was personally disappointed to hear that Rushdie withdrew,” she wrote, “… I’m glad that CMC continues to extend its invitation to Rushdie, and I’m hopeful that he will return to share his story of fortitude and courage.”
While the CMC campus objections may have been tame compared to some of the violent anti-Israel protests that have taken over campuses recently, the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles weighed in on the controversy, bringing heightened outside attention.
“Salman Rushdie has good reason to fear for his safety, given the murderous hysteria of Islamists. The Los Angeles office of CAIR did nothing to allay those fears, but rather implied that Rushdie was the problem,” Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald said in an email interview with The College Fix.
Mac Donald has experienced firsthand an aggressive mob at Claremont McKenna. In 2017, her “War on Cops” speech was effectively shut down there by a crowd of protesters who surrounded the building and blocked exits while they screamed and banged on windows.
Claremont McKenna is one of five private schools situated in Southern California in a consortium cluster that also includes Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Pomona and Pitzer colleges.
“Claremont McKenna may have been ready to provide whatever security was needed to allow Rushdie to address the ceremony unmolested, but who can blame Rushdie for not being willing to find out,” Mac Donald added. “Besides, coming face to face with the irrationality of the coddled student mob, baying its righteousness, is an experience too depressing to be undertaken without a clear upside.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Salman Rushdie discusses his attack with 60 Minutes / 60 Minutes YouTube screenshot