Assassinations abound. in July 2025, a gunman shot President Donald Trump on fairgrounds near Butler. The nation’s biggest health plan’s CEO was killed in New York City. An arsonist targeted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family. Islamic terrorists vowed to assassinate America’s top pop star, Taylor Swift, causing her to cancel a concert. And on Sept. 10, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot on a college campus.
Three years ago, on the stage of the normally sedate Chautauqua Institution, one Pittsburgher risked his life to thwart another would-be assassin’s plans to kill author Salman Rushdie. Henry Reese spoke with Pittsburgh Quarterly recently about that event and the current atmosphere in America.
In 1989, Iran’s ruling ayatollah’s vow to murder Rushdie was “fired like a bullet that won’t rest until it hits its target.” Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, blasphemed Islam, according to the ayatollah who sentenced Rushdie and publishers and bookstores to death. Bookstores in Berkeley, London and Sydney were bombed. New York City closed Fifth Avenue during a bookstore bomb threat.
Moments after an August 12, 2022 interview began before a packed Chautauqua audience, an assassin charged the stage, pouncing on the 75- year-old Rushdie, stabbing him repeatedly. Reese, 73, pulled the 24-year-old assassin — Hadi Matar — off Rushdie.
For his actions, Reese won the Carnegie Hero medal this year. The Carnegie Hero Commission wrote that he “charged the assailant and held his legs down. At some point, Reese suffered a stab wound above his right eye, and the assailant managed to keep his upper body free to continue his attack on Rushdie …[who] was able to move a few feet away, out of the assailant’s reach, as he lay bleeding on the floor. … Rushdie was flown to a hospital for his injuries, including 15 stab wounds, some of which required surgery. One wound blinded his right eye permanently. Reese was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was treated for the stab wound above his eye. He recovered.”
Rushdie credits Reese, founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, the world’s largest sanctuary for writers in exile, with saving his life. Reese, who was interviewing Rushdie on stage, recalled the assassination attempt and its aftermath during a recent interview.
Q: Have you been to Chautauqua since the attack?
A: Yes, I was there the year after to be interviewed. There was a degree of anxiety about whether it would be provocative in any way — to people who might want to copy [the assassination attempt] in some way. Part of the reason for doing this was [to provide Chautauqua with] a way for them to — maybe “heal” is too strong a word — kind of put [the attack] behind them and deal with it. Not to be intentionally provocative. I can be aware of fear but can’t let fear dominate. I can be prudent.
Q: Since you and Rushdie were attacked, UnitedHealth’s CEO was assassinated after the assassin wrote a political manifesto. Taylor Swift canceled a concert when she was threatened by Islamic terrorists. Any thoughts on the trend toward assassination?
A: I don’t think anybody should be attacking anybody. Peaceful protest is the only defensible protest. Civil disobedience is fine — as long as you’re prepared for the consequence.
Q: Where were you on July 13, 2024, the date the president was shot by a would-be assassin in Butler Township?
A: I was on the North Side of Pittsburgh driving on East Ohio Street when I saw a huge crowd in a traffic jam. I thought it was the Deutschtown Music Festival, which was occurring in exactly that part of the city. I heard a helicopter coming in. We had no idea what was going on. We were going to dinner at a friend’s. When we got to the dinner, we found out what had happened. I thought of growing up with assassinations — Kennedy, King — and you just don’t want that.
Q: Is your wound healed?
A: Yes, it healed fairly quickly. Every seven stitches there was a big cut — it was black and blue — and all that’d been swelling and I couldn’t really use the eye to read for a couple weeks, but it all passed relatively quickly. The medical treatment was great. … I don’t think anybody said it, but another half-inch, I’d have lost my eye.
Q: What was your emotional response when you encountered him in the courtroom?
A: There was no emotional response. This guy [is] a sad sack. His head was down. I had the impression he knew what he did. He may have been proud of what he did and was trying to be disreputable to everybody else saying, “I don’t care.” I don’t know. He pleaded not guilty. I was surprised. I thought that he would want to testify and speak out but he seemed kind of disinterested the whole time.
Q: You seem to be unfazed. To what do you credit that response — or is there other stuff going on and, if so, are you troubled in a way that you’d rather not discuss or disclose?
A: No. This guy wasn’t after me. I happen to be the person who tried to stop it. Lots of people would have done that. If anything, I think I should have been faster — what if I’d been faster; would this have been less disastrous for Salman Rushdie? I had been conditioned to think of [the terrorist attack] as we talked as a prank. Beyond that, a lot of people saw and experienced it. I didn’t really experience this — I was in it.
Q: Salman Rushdie publicly thanks you ?
A: Personally, he’s been generous that way, saying that I saved his life. I don’t know about that. It’s a warm feeling to know that someone of that caliber who means a lot to me feels that way. It says there’s a certain consistency with the City of Asylum mission. When challenged, I was able to fulfill our mission.
Q: How did your wife hold up through the strain?
A: In some ways it’s been more difficult for her. My mother said it was the worst day of her life because she was watching [from the audience, too]. [Foreign] writers in the [City of Asylum] program experienced this renewal of the trauma that brought them [to America], and it was just fearful. For a few days afterwards, we were all sensitive to everything that was happening on the street. So, in that initial wave, we were definitely impacted in a different way than we were in the long term. It was a little harder for my wife to go back to Chautauqua and accompany me to the trial. She’s strong.
Q: Are you reticent about appearing in public?
A: Not in the slightest.
Q: How has the assassination attempt affected your view of free speech?
A: Two things: First, experiencing something personally. [City of Asylum] writers have had close experiences of that nature in their lives, which gives me a deeper awareness of the risk to express yourself freely. Second, when I think about speaking out, I think about the impact on others, which is something I would see in the writers [in City of Asylum]. They are worried about their families who are still in the [foreign] country. Intellectually, I understood that. Now, sometimes I [ask myself], “Am I making a problem for someone else?” And, if I am, how do I deal with that, because I can’t necessarily silence myself, but how do I either prepare them or how do I make sure I minimize the risk to someone else of being stabbed — and I don’t mean literally?
Q: Have you noticed an increase in people or businesses supporting or being willing to defend, endorse or sanction free speech since the attack?
A: No. Some people, like George Packer, who still writes on it, always have. [James] Fallows has been writing on it more. People who wrote to defend free speech tend to write on it more often or call attention to it, but the number of them has not increased. It doesn’t strike me that a lot of people out there defend free expression.
Q: Did the attack change your relationship with Salman Rushdie?
A: It brought us closer in a way we don’t have to communicate. There’s — “trust” isn’t quite the word — but there’s a sense that we were in a moment in life where we shared something deep, which other pairs of people don’t commonly share. It’s not a reason to dwell or overstate. It’s fairly latent, but it’s there.
Q: Do you think it’s possible that he will put in an appearance at the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh?
A: That would be a great hope that would happen at some point.
Q: Is there a single insight you’ve gained about that day in 2022?
A: No. I wish I were smarter. Salman Rushdie’s last book on this, Knife, is a love story. I think back to when Svetlana Alexievich was here. She said she wants to write only about love from now on. I think you’re seeing more of that as a reaction. I think of the support of my wife, Diane. That’s part of what brought me through. That’s what, in a literary sense, people are focusing on — not love as romance but something that, maybe, in a deep way has not been looked at the same way. You were asking about authors who speak freely and I wondered in a very different way if you think of [Thomas] Pynchon who speaks out not at all and says, “My writing stands for what I do,” and has written very different kinds of books — very powerful — but the only time he actually sent someone to accept an award was when he sent a comedian, right? It’s a different response than Salman Rushdie, who’s a powerful defender, but that’s also a kind of response. I think [Pynchon is] saying, “What I have to say is what I have to say, and I don’t have to defend it, and nor does anybody else.”
Q: Do you appreciate Pittsburgh more now than in 2022?
A: Generally, yes. What I can appreciate is that there’s a human scale of life here and a strong sense of connectivity and community. What affects one affects more than one. Certainly, it’s been personally reaffirming to me — from many people, from the political structure to the individual, like “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” I mean it’s not 100 percent of people, but, if I were living in New York, I don’t think I would have felt that. I don’t think it’s unique to the city’s size. I think [Pittsburgh’s] a big-hearted town — they’re genuine, they genuinely care. In New York, sometimes I feel like they’re asking genuinely, but they’re also angling. People are less guarded [in Pittsburgh]. I’m remembering what I said about love. It’s partly what carried me through — love between my wife and myself — and I hadn’t thought about that ’til I started thinking about Salman Rushdie’s book and our conversation.
Q: What single sentence captures the 2022 attack?
A: Freedom of creative expression is under threat. How hard is this? When [Poland’s anti-Communist Solidarity radical activist and leader] Lech Walesa spoke at the international cities of refuge network meeting in Gdansk, he came in slip-ons, dressed informally, got up, looked at everybody, and finally said, “It’s your job to finish this because I’m done. I can’t do [any] more.” He looked around the room and said, “Don’t look to me for advice; look to yourselves.”
Freelance writer Scott Holleran was born in Pittsburgh and lives in southern California.
