In light of my last post on anti-Israel activism on campus, let me point to a recent incident that does not necessarily advance the cause of civil and informed academic discourse as it pertains to the Jewish State.
This past week came word that the board of the trustees of the City University of New York had voted to shelve the granting of an honorary degree to the playwright Tony Kushner. (As for CUNY, it has distanced itself from the actions of the board).
The trustee who seems to have moved the procedural levers on this, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, was concerned about Kushner’s views on Israel. Wiesenfeld is quoted by The New York Times as saying: “I think it’s up to all of us to look at fairness and consider these things. . . . Especially when the State of Israel, which is our sole democratic ally in the area, sits in the neighborhood which is almost universally dominated by administrations which are almost universally misogynist, antigay, anti-Christian.”
Wiesenfeld points to critical remarks Kushner has made about Israeli policies and politics, especially comments a while back about “ethnic cleansing” and the founding of the State of Israel.
Kushner, for his part, is incensed, has demanded an apology, and has removed himself from any further consideration for receipt of the degree.
Intelligent reactions to this unfortunate episode have been lodged by The Jewish Week‘s James Besser and Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic.
Both make the point that they might not necessarily agree with Kushner’s opinions, but find CUNY’s actions to be ill advised. Reasonable institutions, they argue, should be able to countenance opposing viewpoints and, besides, Kushner has unambiguously expressed his support of Israel’s legitimacy in other fora.
I concur and don’t have much to add other than to note that the granting of honorary degrees is meant to celebrate individuals who have excelled in their fields in a manner that should be a guide and inspiration to students.
That the Pulitzer Prize winning Kushner has excelled in precisely this regard seems obvious. Any honorary degree, of course, honors the work of the artist, not the artist’s political views. This seems to me the only logical basis for granting honorary degrees (lest we only honor cultural figures whose opinions coincide with those of a university’s board of trustees).
Conversely, an institution has a right, and even an obligation, to not grant recognition to cultural figures who will use the occasion devoted to the recognition of their art as an opportunity to espouse their personal political views. (The case of the artist who claims her politics is her art and her art is her politics is a difficult one which I won’t address here).
Sometimes the recipient of an honorary degree is asked to address an audience. Sometimes s/he just gets garlanded, smiles, bows, and says nothing. But let’s imagine that Kushner’s CUNY ceremony would have entailed comments on his part. Under what circumstances would it be appropriate to deny him such an honor?
Back in 2004 I listened to author E.L. Doctorow go off on the Bush administration and the War in Iraq for a sweltering half hour at a commencement exercise. Doctorow was subsequently booed off the stage, evading a flurry of gas-activated derision projectiles on his way down the stairs.
I did not boo and I did not launch, but I did find Doctorow’s intervention to be an unbelievably schmucky thing to do. This ceremony was not—obviously!—a forum for a partisan screed on world events, but a fairly generic celebration for families (many of whom had members who were risking their lives in the war Doctorow was expounding upon on that particular day).
Nothing indicates Kushner would have gone that route at CUNY. While I don’t agree with his views on Israel, they don’t seem like the type of ideas that are impervious to complexity. His work on the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Munich does not point to a thinker who avoids nuance or traffics in the types of facile platitudes that I have heard for years from the campus anti-Zionist crowd.
Were he to go off on an anti-Israel tirade, the students of John Jay College of Criminal Justice (where I am proud to say I once taught) would have critically assessed his comments, asked themselves if this was the appropriate place to share such sentiments, and then moved on with their lives.
Future boards would have known that the hypothetical Kushner abused the privilege of his platform and then would have acted in accordance with that information.
Of course, it does not seem warranted to assume that the real Kushner would have done that and for this reason he is correct in requesting an apology from the CUNY board.