The Tragic Site of Salman Rushdie’s Stabbing

Founded in 1874 as an educational experiment, Chautauqua is a nonprofit organization and a summer resort. It has a rich and unique history of hosting open discussion as well as championing diversity of thought, religious pluralism and free expression. Chautauqua has hosted countless speakers, from artists to scientists, policy makers to authors. Theodore Roosevelt, who visited in 1905, called it “the most American thing in America.” His distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt made it the stage for his 1936 “I hate war” speech, and many others followed.

The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle offered reading programs to those who hadn’t had the opportunity to attend college—an initiative that later spread throughout the U.S., forming the so-called Chautauqua Movement.

Chautauqua’s amphitheater, where Mr. Rushdie and another speaker were attacked, is the site of lectures and concerts throughout the summer—often reported on by the Chautauquan Daily, where I got my start as a reporter. Many visitors bring their own cushions for the amphitheater’s hard seats; a day in the theater can feature anything from an opera to a Harold Lloyd movie to a hard-hitting lecture.

It’s the apparent innocence of the place, with its Victorian homes and many churches, its porches and its tranquil lake, that draws many back year after year.

It’s an innocence that was rudely disturbed yesterday both on Chautauqua’s small stage and on the world stage, evoking memories of the fatwa that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued against Mr. Rushdie in 1989 after the publication of his book “The Satanic Verses.” The ensuing threats to Mr. Rushdie’s life caused him to live in fear of attack for decades, an episode that seemed gone and forgotten.

But much like so many other ghosts from the past that have returned in recent time—from a land war in Europe to the rising threat of autocracy in Western democracies—the assault reminds us that the threat to free speech is both old and new again.

Mr. Latour is publisher of The Wall Street Journal.