Free Speech on Campus

Rushdie Speaks to CU Students

By Richard Martin, 2-18-05

Another icon of free speech spoke at CU a couple of days ago, in the wake of the ongoing controversy over Wade Churchill. This time the speaker was not welcomed with a Native American drum circle or with shouts of acclaim; he was greeted respectfully, as befits one of the four or five greatest living novelists in the English language and a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize.

Salman Rushdie, the Indian expatriate writer who was sentenced to death in absentia by the late Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spoke to a small CU class during the day on Tuesday and to a standing-room-only crowd at Macky Auditorium that night. He was asked about the firestorm surrounding Churchill and his inflammatory essay on the 9/11 victims.
“A man sentenced to death again last week stepped across the line as he described his life and defended his work during two lectures given at CU-Boulder Tuesday,� wrote the Colorado Daily’s Joseph Thomas. Asked about Churchill, Rushdie demurred that he wasn't familiar with the prof's work, but pointed out the obvious:"The problem with free speech is that you have to defend a lot of jerks. The test of free speech comes when someone says something that you don't agree with."

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