In visit to Brown, Salman Rushdie discusses freedom of speech, literary influences and more – Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] In a discussion at Brown University, renowned novelist Salman Rushdie encouraged an audience of hundreds to do all they can to protect freedom of speech, even at a time when countries across the globe are struggling to preserve fundamental tenets of democracy.

Speaking to Brown students, faculty and staff and community members from the Providence area, who participated both in-person and online, Rushdie made the case for defending freedom of all expression, even that which most deem racist or fascist.

Now we live in a country in which people seem to be forgetting the value of the First Amendment, Rushdie said. In particular, young people seem in increasing numbers to be willing to accept that certain kinds of ideas should not be given permission to exist. And I worry about that... Ideas dont disappear because you suppress them. Sometimes they increase in force. So its better to know where the enemy is so you can argue with them and defeat them.

The panel discussion and Q&A, hosted by the Center for Contemporary South Asia at Browns Watson Institute for International Affairs on Friday, Nov. 5, centered the subjects of politics, religion and literature, part of a year-long series of events recognizing 75 years of independence in India and Pakistan. Panelists included Ashutosh Varshney, director of the center and a Brown professor of international studies and political science; Shahzad Bashir, a professor of Islamic studies and history at Brown; and Gauri Viswanathan, a professor of humanities and director of the South Asia Institute at Columbia University.

For more than 40 years, the India-born Rushdies novels, short stories, essays and plays have captured the imaginations of millions. He is best known for his profound insights on migration between the Indian subcontinent and the Western world, his deft navigation through decades of complex tensions between India and Pakistan, and his creative use of magical realism to draw historical, religious and literary parallels. Among his countless accolades are a knighthood bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II, fellowships at the Royal Society of Literature in the United Kingdom and at lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and the Best of the Booker prize for his novel Midnights Children.

In the discussion, Rushdie who has lived in the United States since 2000 likened the sacred space of free speech to a piazza where all citizens are welcome to pass through and discuss anything they like an idea he riffed on in a New Yorker story in 2020.

Its that place where you can go to say anything and be argued with, he said. The importance is not that somebody wins the argument, its that [the argument] can happen, and it can go on happening. People can change their minds, or... be hardened in their convictions. But the place of discourse exists. That space... should be preserved.

How Americans, and others, can fight the looming specter of totalitarianism while preserving that sacred piazza, Rushdie acknowledged, is the great question of our time one he felt incapable of answering definitively. But one starting point, he proposed, could lie in revisiting the history of the Nazi Partys ascension to power in Germany.

Because Germany tolerated the Nazi Party to run in an election, that party then abolished the electoral system which brought it to power, he said. And so theres a thought there: Maybe the limiting point of freedom is... to deny it to people who would deny freedom to others if they came to power.

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In visit to Brown, Salman Rushdie discusses freedom of speech, literary influences and more - Brown University