IAPP Global Summit 2026: Salman Rushdie reflects on notion of privacy after attempt on his life

World-renowned author Salman Rushdie recounted the near-fatal stabbing he suffered when an assailant rushed him on stage during a 2022 event. 

Rushdie said the husband-and-wife doctor team in the audience who provided him with immediate trauma care began cutting his clothes off his body to apply direct pressure to his wounds before emergency responders arrived to transport him to the hospital. In that instant, he said he first lamented his suit being cut up while having to "surrender" the notion of privacy as horrified onlookers, there to see him speak just moments earlier, were now watching him being cut out of his clothes as he clung to life. 

"One of the things about serious injury is that in order to survive it, you have to surrender anything like an idea of privacy because people dive in (to help), and you have to let them," said Rushdie, who spoke with IAPP Vice President and Chief Knowledge Officer Caitlin Fennessy, CIPP/US, during a keynote discussion at the IAPP Global Summit 2026 in Washington, D.C. 30 March.  

"(After recovering), one of (the doctors) said to me that when she took my pulse, there was no pulse. They had the idea of getting somebody from the audience to lift up my legs as high as possible so that the blood would flow backwards to the heart," Rushdie said. "So, after that, privacy isn't exactly what’s on your mind. What's on your mind is staying alive."

Rushdie spoke to Global Summit attendees about the harrowing experience and his recovery, which is the focus of his latest novel, "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder." He also shared his thoughts on how social media compromises individuals’ privacy and what privacy means in places around the world where digital privacy, let alone physical privacy, is materially scarce.  

Rushdie said in a country like his native India, one's ability to exercise any sense of privacy — from simply being able to close the door to being able to use the bathroom in private — is dependent on their level of income. He said a large swath of India’s population do not have bathrooms and many "perform their natural functions outdoors," which is "particularly problematic for women who quite often have to wait until the cover of darkness."

"Many live in very small accommodations with many people sharing a room," Rushdie said. "That sense of being by yourself somewhere, or even having secrets about your life, which other people don’t know — there's no such thing. There is no sense of yourself as an individual."

In 1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie, and he was given a 24/7 security detail by British police for the next 13 years. He compared lacking the ability to enjoy privacy by virtue of one’s surroundings with having to work through logistical details with his security team for activities as minimal as going for a walk to clear his writer's block. 

"One of the immediate concepts when I’ve talked with people who receive protection, everybody says the same thing,” Rushdie said. "That the most difficult thing about it is not (the possibility of) death, it's the intrusion into your private life of people who are there to look after you."

In the digital realm, Rushdie weighed in on the upstart global movement to ban children from accessing social media, beginning with Australia at the end of last year. He said he is "coming to the view" that the bans are worth pursuing by lawmakers.

"I think there are arguments on both sides because there's a kind of freedom argument, but there's also kind of a parenting argument," Rushdie said. "And that is to ensure children have a proper development, so I’m coming to the view that it’s worth doing."

Rushdie concluded his remarks discussing the rise of artificial intelligence. He said AI "technology doesn't just help us think, it tells us how to think," and in the current period of global history where authoritarianism is on the rise, he believes AI used by malicious actors for destructive purposes will eventually rob people of their humanity. 

"We live at a moment in cultural history where art is seen by many people as the enemy," Rushdie said. "We need to understand that art and culture are not luxuries. They are actually at the heart of what helps us to be human beings."