CUNY shelves honorary award to playwright Tony Kushner over "anti-Israel" charge

[Hannah Bell]

Trying to stem a spiraling controversy, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York issued a statement on Thursday that its decision to block an honorary degree for the playwright Tony Kushner “should not be interpreted as reflecting on Mr. Kushner’s accomplishments.”

But the statement fell short of an apology, which is what Mr. Kushner called for after Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, a trustee, claimed that he held deeply anti-Israel views. Mr. Wiesenfeld’s words, at a board meeting on Monday, set in motion a vote by the trustees to shelve the honor.

Karen Kaplowitz, the head of the faculty committee at John Jay that had nominated Mr. Kushner, said she was mortified that he had been treated with disrespect. She said the Faculty Senate had submitted the nomination to honor Mr. Kushner’s work. “This is not,” Dr. Kaplowitz said, “how the academy works, and it should not be how the trustees of a great university operate.”

Mr. Wiesenfeld was the only trustee to speak against Mr. Kushner at the meeting Monday night. He recited three quotations that he said typified Mr. Kushner’s anti-Israel views; the quotations were taken from a Web site that Mr. Kushner has said he was not aware of. The accusations were part of a longer, four-minute speech against what Mr. Wiesenfeld described as a growing tolerance for anti-Israel views on CUNY campuses and elsewhere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/nyregion/cuny-vote-not-to-honor-kushner-is-criticized.html?_r=3&ref=nyregion

[leveymg]

1. For this (see below) one can be denied an honorary degree these days?

Mr. Kushner has criticized policies and actions by Israel in the past, including what he called the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from the land that became the State of Israel at its founding. But he has also repeatedly said that he is a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist, that he has never supported a boycott of the country, and that his views are shared by many Jews and supporters of Israel.

[Keith Bee]

3. From HuffPo

The whole imbroglio started on Monday when Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, who is a CUNY trustee, as well as a trustee with pro-Israel think tank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, made an impassioned plea to the board. He asked that Kushner be denied his honororary degree, citing posts he had found on the website of Norman Finkelstein, a prominent critic of Israel and well known political scientist, whom Kushner has never personally communicated with.

Finkelstein, in 2006, had titled one of his blog posts: "Kushner: Creation of Israel a mistake," and proceeded to quote past interviews Kushner had given, most prominently to Ha’aretz, an Israeli news source.
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In a transcript of the May 2 speech released by the New York Times, Wiesenfeld quoted from the Ha'aretz piece, which featured an interview with Kushner back in 2004. "But you are saying then that the very creation of the State of Israel as a Jewish state was not a good idea," Wiesenfeld quotes. "And Mr. Kushner answered it was a mistake."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/06/tony-kushner-cuny-controversy_n_858824.html

[trud]

5. "Mr. Wiesenfeld, who told The Times’s Jim Dwyer that some Palestinians are not human" n/t

[Keith Bee]

6. Link?

[Hannah Bell]

7. ...nyt editorial

The CUNY chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, should have spoken out forcefully on this issue. And Mr. Wiesenfeld, who told The Times’s Jim Dwyer that some Palestinians are not human, should resign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/opinion/07sat4.html

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Tony Kushner is worse than Hitler.

I thought McCarthy died in '57.



The world we live in.

[xchrom]

4. wow. nt