Readers’ comments: May 30, 2025

CMC was wrong to silence Rushdie
Dear editor:
As a parent of a Claremont McKenna College grad, I am disappointed to have read that Sir Salmon Rushdie withdrew his invitation to be the keynote speaker at the 2025 CMC graduation [“Rushdie out, Heinzl in as CMC commencement speaker,” May 16]. President Chodosh reported that this decision was “his alone and completely beyond our control”; however, it appears that he may have felt threatened and silenced by a minority who, in the past, silenced and threatened him.
Sir Rushdie, a world renowned, brilliant author and speaker triggered much controversy and political/religious outrage by Iran with his 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses.” In 1989, Khomeini issued a “fatwa” against him, threatened his life and put a bounty on his head. Three years ago he was brutally attacked and almost killed at a speaking engagement in New York.
He was silenced by Muslim authority in Iran, and then by a Muslim attacker, and now, in 2025, apparently by the Muslim Student Association and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
There is a pattern in how Sir Rushdie was silenced in the past and now in the present. There is danger when the cry for “freedom of speech” is one sided.
How is it that one group may speak their truth and that will silence someone else from speaking his truth?
CMC’s new speaker was apparently accepted by the students and civil rights group who were against Rushdie. Who is making the administrative decisions at CMC?
It is wrong and moral cowardice to comply with indifference to forces that prohibit freedom of speech. Because of Sir Rushdie’s withdrawal students were denied the opportunity of listening to and learning from a brilliant man who has suffered much because he was ready to speak his truth even though different than others. But an even bigger danger is that the students witnessed what compliance without moral stamina or integrity looks like.
Carol Oberg
Ventura