Brown should be applauded for bringing free speech advocate Salman Rushdie to speak on campus as part of its Year of India events. We spend a lot of time on this blog criticizing Brown for its poor record on intellectual diversity and academic freedom, which is all the more reason to give the University credit when its due. As readers may recall, Rushdie sparked controversy in the Muslim world in 1989 because of how his book, The Satanic Verses, depicted Islam. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, issued a fatwah against Rushdie, and his book was banned in many Muslim countries. At his lecture, on Feb. 16, Rushdie delivered an inspiring defense of the freedom of speech. He endorsed what he called the ‘extreme view of free speech’ –namely that it all should be let out—as the ‘sensible one.’ Rushdie added, “The defense of free speech begins with someone who says something you don’t like.” It is a message that needs repeating at Brown. We only wish Rushdie had been around during the reparations ad controversy in 2001, when student radicals stole an entire press run of the Brown Daily Herald–an act of vandalism and an affront to free speech that was condoned by many professors and exused by the administration.