Salman Rushdie on Blasphemy and Writing

In this episode of New Dialogues, Salman Rushdie visits The New School and delivers the 2025 New School for Social Research William Phillips lecture titled “Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime.” Rushdie, the author of 15 novels, including the Booker Prize-winning “Midnight’s Children and “The Satanic Verses,” and nonfiction books including, most recently, “The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories,” speaks on freedom of thought and speech, the rising politicization of religion, and blasphemy as a form of resistance. Following the lecture, Rushdie chats with New School creative writing professor Luis Jaramillo, and responds to audience questions read by Christoph Cox, executive dean of Eugene Lang College. The William Phillips lecture series was established at The New School for Social Research in 2006 to further the legacy of William Phillips, co-founder of Partisan Review, a journal committed to freedom of thought in literature, to creative expression, and to serious, open debate.Read the event transcript: https://publicseminar.org/2025/04/salman-rushdie-on-blasphemy/Learn more about The New School for Social Research: https://www.newschool.edu/NSSR/Learn more about Eugene Lang College: https://www.newschool.edu/lang/