Rushdie to Class of 2015: 'Be Larger than Life'

The keynote address at Emory’s 170th Commencement by outgoing University Distinguished Professor Salman Rushdie was covered by the Chronicle of Higher Education, NPR, TIME, CNN.com, and other local and national outlets including the New York Times, which published this excerpt: “The novelist’s job . . . is to plunge his hands as deep into the stuff of life as he can, all the way up to the elbows, all the way up to the armpits, and come up with the stuff of life: What’s really going on in people’s heads, what music is in there, what movies, what dreams. . . . It’s not such a bad plan for life, either. . . . Plunge in. Dive into the deep end. Sink or swim. Well, if possible, don’t sink. If you learned anything at Emory, you should have learned how to stay afloat.”