Salman Rushdie presents the 2025 William Phillips Lecture

Video Description

In March, acclaimed author Salman Rushdie visited The New School to deliver the 2025 William Phillips lecture, a talk 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, "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder," spoke about freedom of thought and speech, the rising politicization of religion, and blasphemy as a form of resistance. Following the lecture, Rushdie chatted with New School creative writing professor Luis Jaramillo, and responded to audience questions read out by Christopher 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/