At 10.45am on Friday, Michael Hill, the president of Chautauqua Institution, was sitting four rows back from the stage as Salman Rushdie was being introduced as a headline speaker in the cultural center’s summer programme.
It should have been a joyous occasion for more than 1,000 people in the hall, and for Hill personally. Rushdie had spoken at the institution only one other time previously, and as the event began, Hill reflected on how closely the novelist’s struggles and convictions mirrored Chautauqua’s own.
“Mr Rushdie is a symbol of free speech and expression, which dovetails exactly with what we do,” Hill told the Guardian in an interview. “We pull people together across ideologies and divides to try [to] spread understanding and make the world a better place.”
But two minutes later, at 10.47am, Hill said he witnessed the utter antithesis of everything that the institution has stood for since its founding 148 years ago. A man rushed on stage and stabbed Rushdie multiple times in the neck and abdomen.
The attack had left Hill profoundly shaken, he said, speaking 24 hours after it unfolded.
“For me personally, I cannot unsee what happened,” Hill said. “We watched an attack in front of us, up close, on a stage that feels like a second home to me, and that’s deeply traumatic.”
The sense of shock and dismay articulated by Hill has ricocheted across this tiny western New York town and its surrounding countryside. The institution lies in a heavily rural area replete with cornfields, Amish farms and 30 vineyards serving New York’s burgeoning wine industry.
If farm products are one staple of the area, the other is comedy – Lucille Ball was born nearby, and the National Comedy Center is located in the closest larger town, Jamestown.
At the center of Chautauqua Institution’s efforts is the aspiration to build inter-faith connections. Its 19th-century roots were as a Methodist training camp for Sunday school teachers, but in recent decades it has widened its ambitions to tackle some of the toughest religious and communal conflicts on the planet.
“We welcome people of all faiths and none,” Hill said.
There is a strong Christian and Jewish presence in the community, and a growing emphasis on reaching out to Muslims. The summer season includes a programme on “Islam 101” and there are regular dialogues attempting to unite Jews and Muslims.
The calendar for next week includes an interfaith talk billed as “Being the change – a leap of faith”. It features the founders of a network of Muslim and Jewish women, Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom.
Against that tradition, Friday’s attack came as a violation. “This was principally an attack on Mr Rushdie, who we continue to hold in prayer,” Hill said. “But it was also an attack on the very foundation of who we are and what we stand for. At the core, for us, it was an attempt at silencing.”
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, questions have been raised about security at the event. Could more have been done to protect Rushdie?
Hill declined to address specific security concerns, such as whether there should have been walk-through metal detectors – or staffers equipped with metal-detecting wands – installed to catch the knife used by the attacker. He stressed there had been extensive planning with state and local authorities before the summer season began and that “we put in place what we believed was appropriate security for the event”.
Did he have regrets?
He said: “It’s natural we are asking, ‘Could we have done anything differently?’ The reality is that a 24-year-old was committed to enacting violence on an individual, and he found a way to get there. I regret that.”
A review is now under way of security at all upcoming events. That includes Monday’s lecture by Jamie Raskin, the Democratic member of Congress from Maryland who is a key figure on the US House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.
Raskin will be speaking as part of a series of talks that the institution is calling “new profiles in courage”. He will be addressing the political challenges of January 6 but also the courage he has had to mine as the father of Tommy Raskin, who in December 2020 took his own life, aged 25.
Hill said the institution was celebrating individuals who have stood up for what is right despite great adversity, an all the more urgent theme in the wake of Friday’s attack. “That is how Mr Rushdie has spent his whole life, and we are very hopeful he will continue to do so,” he added.
Chautauqua Institution now finds itself grappling with exactly the conundrum that has loomed over Rushdie since the fatwa against his life was issued in 1989 – how do you stay true to your values, and live your best life, when faced with constant danger? “We are asking the same awful question,” Hill said.
He went on: “Mr Rushdie gives us the answer. He tells us: you can be terrorised if you allow yourself to hide from the terror.”
The way to respond to the violence unleashed on Rushdie and his community, Hill said, was to do the opposite – to reinforce the bridge-building mission.
He said: “I have a deep sadness for what has happened here, and that’s precisely why we have to push forward. Otherwise they win.”
