Savenor serves as the Executive Director of Civic Spirit.
At a session that was supposed to address freedom of expression in our fractured world, Salman Rushdie and moderator Henry Reese were brutally attacked. August 12, 2022, was not the day any of us at Chautauqua Institution expected.
I was in the audience on the day of the attack. My five seconds of footage of the attack posted on Twitter went viral.
Our experience tragically morphed into something surreal and horrific immediately after Rushdie and the moderator took their seats to great applause. A man jumped on the stage and began pummeling Mr. Rushdie. With every vicious movement of the assailant’s arm, silence descended on this usually pacifist community of learners.
For 150 years, Chautauqua Institution in the northwest corner of New York state has developed a reputation as a forum for convening conversations about big ideas and wrestling with assumptions, all in the hopes of making contemporary society and our shared future stronger and more secure. Chautauqua personifies Mr. Rushdie’s view that, “A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.”
I attended this event not just for my own edification but also because it connects to my work at Civic Spirit, an organization that provides training in civic education for the 4.5 million students who attend faith based day schools - Jewish, Catholic, Christian, and Islamic – in the United States.
You can imagine my dismay by the irony that the session devoted to freedom of speech was abruptly canceled by an attack on the speaker. Later that day we walked over to the amphitheater, where a pile of flowers, placards of hope and a candle filled the entrance that had been closed since the attack. Watching the maintenance team scrub blood off the stage, I gasped at the realization that this platform for inspiration and wisdom had been transformed into a crime scene.
I was in New York for 9/11. I was in Israel in 2002 when daily bombings killed scores of innocent civilians. And now this.
Truth be told, doubt overcame me. How can we talk about building bridges across differences when some among us will go to great lengths - and literally drive hundreds of miles - to assault and silence those with whom they disagree? Can our social contract withstand this relentless trauma?
The night after Mr. Rushdie’s attack we returned to the amphitheater to witness its reopening. The president of Chautauqua Institution, Michael E. Hill, framed the moment: “We are called to take on fear and the worst of all human traits – hate... The response must be love, of course, but also action. We must return to our podiums and pulpits. We must continue to convene the critical conversations that can help build empathy; obviously, this is more important now than ever.”
These words laced with purpose, confidence, and resilience offered this community a way forward, myself included. I needed to be reminded that with a growing sense of helplessness and hopelessness among today’s youth, civic education – and hope itself -constitutes a constructive course of action. At this polarized moment with hate crimes on the rise, it is vital that we not only ensure that our faith based day schools focus on civics, but also students, teachers, and administrators are supported in this endeavor at their families’ kitchen tables and spiritual leaders’ pulpits.
At Chautauqua, we expected to learn how our society can encourage and support open dialogue and foster understanding across divides. Sadly what we witnessed was a violation of the fundamental values of the Institution and America itself. This attack reinforced that we can never take the open exchange of ideas for granted.
Sadly, the attack on Mr. Rushdie last year is not an isolated event. News around the country of speakers being canceled for sharing different opinions, assaults on elected officials and their families, and attacks on those with different backgrounds showcase that this conflict has unfortunately become a part of American life. The sobering truth is, we can never take the open exchange of ideas for granted.
On that beautiful summer day, Mr. Rushdie lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand. While Mr. Rushdie did not get the chance to speak on that summer day, his unfailing commitment to free speech and vision for a healthy democracy continue to guide and inspire.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.