UR HEARS BENNETT, RUSHDIE

A noted conservative and a novelist who was driven into hiding for the
words he penned spoke Saturday as part of the University of Rochester's
Meliora Weekend.

Both men -- William J. Bennett and Salman Rushdie -- were among
high-profile speakers for the event, a mix of reunions, family events and
lectures.

The weekend, which grew out of a similar celebration in 2000 for UR's 150th
anniversary, also hosted U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton on Friday and will
feature CNN founder Ted Turner at noon today.

Bennett, who was scheduled to talk about leadership and values, also
touched on choice in education, Iraq, the drug war, welfare reform and
America after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

He told of the nationwide search by the Reagan administration for a
Republican to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Only three humanities professors could be found who voted for Reagan,
Bennett said, adding that he was the second choice.

He spoke of the leaders he met in his travels around the country, first as
secretary of education under Reagan and later as director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy under the first President Bush.

In his travels as drug czar, Bennett met a Charleston, S.C., police chief
- -- Rubin Greenberg -- who reduced drug crime by evicting public housing
tenants who fed or sheltered drug dealers.

"That's what a great leader can do," he said. "Change the whole psychology
of what's going on."

Rushdie spoke to a capacity crowd.

He was already an internationally known writer when his 1988 novel, Satanic
Verses, was banned in India and South Africa because it was condemned by
the Ayatollah Khomeini for its religious references. Khomeini issued a
fatwa calling for all Muslims to execute Rushdie. Rushdie was in hiding for
most of the 1990s.

Yet freedom of expression won, Rushdie said.

"The book is still available, the writer hasn't been silenced and between
the Ayatollah and I, one of us is dead," he said.

Rushdie, who now lives in New York City, read several pieces on topics such
as the 2000 presidential election and his hippie days in London.

One essay, titled "Darwin in Kansas," was about efforts in Kansas to have
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution removed from textbooks, an action
Rushdie called "living proof that Darwin's theory of natural selection
(survival of the fittest) doesn't work."