CUNY Nixes Honor For Kushner
In a rare move, the trustees of the City University of New York have voted to shelve an honorary degree that one of its campuses, John Jay College, planned to award to Tony Kushner (pictured), the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of “Angels in America†and the author of a new epic opening Thursday in New York. The vote on Monday evening came after a CUNY trustee said that Mr. Kushner had disparaged the State of Israel in past comments, a characterization that the writer attacked on Wednesday. Plenty of Kushner’s criticisms are shared by Israelis of diverse backgrounds. The CUNY board’s action, as far as I can tell, is petty politics. But as the saying goes (a saying routinely attributed to Henry Kissinger but sounding like Churchill and probably reaching back to Woodrow Wilson), “Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”
