By now, most of those who have followed the brouhaha over the honorary degree being given by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to playwright Tony Kushner (whose best known work is the award-winning play Angels in America) would probably like the controversy to go away. After all, the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY), of which John Jay is part, has now reversed its earlier decision and allowed John Jay to award Kushner the honorary degree, so the issue, as a practical matter, has been resolved. Before we let this controversy’s allotted fifteen minutes expire, however, it is worth taking another look at what happened and why, and trying to figure out if there is anything of value to be learned from it.
The controversy about the proposed honorary degree to Kushner began on May 2, when the CUNY board, near the end of its regularly scheduled meeting, took up the slate of candidates for honorary degrees that had been recommended by CUNY’s various schools. The board’s approval is required for the award of honorary degrees, but usually the slate of candidates proposed by the various CUNY colleges is approved without debate or dissent. On this occasion, however, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a CUNY board member since 1999 who was appointed by former Governor George Pataki, objected to John Jay’s proposed award of an honorary degree to Kushner because of Kushner’s extreme anti-Israel views. Wiesenfeld later told an interviewer that he had not expected the board to deny approval to Kushner but wanted to use the opportunity to register a dissent, thus calling attention to Kushner’s extremism. While the details of exactly what happened next are somewhat murky, the bottom line is clear: the board tabled John Jay’s recommendation of Kushner for an honorary degree while approving the remainder of the slate of proposed honorary degree recipients. Since the board’s next regular meeting was scheduled to occur after John Jay’s commencement, tabling that recommendation effectively denied Kushner the honorary degree, at least for this year.
It was the Jewish Week that initially reported the CUNY board’s action (or, more accurately, its non-action) on its website. The board’s refusal to approve Kushner’s honorary degree created an avalanche of criticism that obviously took everyone by surprise. Kushner himself added fuel to the fire with a May 4 letter to the CUNY board in which he accused Wiesenfeld of mounting a “vicious attack “ on him that constituted “slander.” He demanded an apology from the other board members for paying attention to Wiesenfeld, and asserted that Wiesenfeld, “like most bullies, prefers an unfair fight.” Others joined in the attack on Wiesenfeld, demanding that the board reverse its position. To put additional pressure on the board, several prior recipients of CUNY honorary degrees threatened to return their awards.
Under mounting pressure, Benno Schmidt, the CUNY board’s chairman, hastily convened a special meeting of its executive committee (of which Wiesenfeld is not a member), which reversed the board’s decision and approved John Jay’s honorary degree award to Kushner. (Apparently, the executive committee has the authority to reverse the board under some circumstances, although that authority is rarely exercised.) Some of those who had spoken out in favor went further, urging that Wiesenfeld resign or be removed from the board. Wiesenfeld has subsequently made it clear that he has no intention of resigning, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the only one with legal authority to remove him, surely has more pressing issues to worry about and is unlikely to wade into the middle of this controversy.
Are there any lessons worth learning from this course of events? At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Tony Kushner’s views on Israel really should be abhorrent, not only to anyone who loves Israel but also to anyone who loves truth. Kushner, in his letter to CUNY’s board, accused Wiesenfeld of “deliver[ing] a grotesque caricature of my political beliefs regarding the state of Israel.” His letter carefully avoids delving too far into the substance of those beliefs, however, though he admits that he has accused Israel of following a policy of “ethnic cleansing” vis-à-vis the Palestinians, a characterization that should be beyond the pale of civil discussion. Kushner’s letter tries to validate his use of the odious phrase “ethnic cleansing” by reference to the work of Israeli historian Benny Morris, but Morris, to the best of my knowledge, has never used that phrase (and Kushner’s letter, if read carefully, doesn’t actually claim that he has). Though Morris’s early scholarship on Israel’s founding was controversial, he has over time substantially moderated his harsher criticisms. Even at his most critical, moreover, Morris’s views were always more nuanced that Kushner’s – admittedly, not a difficult standard to meet. Kushner’s letter to the CUNY board also admits that he serves on the advisory board of the Jewish Voice for Peace, which has rightly been the center of controversy of late. Unlike those organizations (such as J Street and Americans for Peace Now) that are part of what might be called the mainstream peace camp, JVP supports the anti-Israel boycott and refuses to endorse a two-state solution.
But even though Kushner’s views on Israel should be abhorrent to any decent person, Wiesenfeld erred by raising those views as a reason to deny Kushner an honorary degree. I do not mean to suggest, as have some of Wiesenfeld’s critics, that the board’s initial rejection of the proposed honorary degree was an infringement of Kushner’s right of free speech. As many of Wiesenfeld’s defenders have correctly pointed out, no one has a right to an honorary degree. Indeed, John Jay’s Procedures for Awarding Honorary Degrees, available on the school’s web site, expressly stipulates that “the conferral of the honorary degree is conditional on the approval of the CUNY Chancellor and of the CUNY Board of Trustees.” Weisenfeld himself pointed out, in an op-ed written in his own defense the day after Kushner’s letter to the CUNY board, the difference between honorary degrees and degrees in course. The CUNY board cannot deny a student a degree that he or she has earned because of that student’s views, however abhorrent. By contrast, the Board had the legal right to refuse to honor Kushner for whatever reason it thought appropriate. As a public university, CUNY may be somewhat more constrained than a private college as to its reasons for denying honors, but it’s difficult to believe that any court would hold that a public university’s board cannot consider an honorary degree candidate’s views in deciding whether he or she is worthy of such an honor.
Wiesenfeld’s error was not constitutional but strategic. He may not have noticed, but Israel has become a bit more controversial in recent years than it once was, even here in the United States. There was a time, not all that long ago, when supporters of Israel could count on strong support not only from virtually all Jews, but from the vast majority of Americans. Most Americans still have a positive view of Israel, but it’s becoming a harder sell, particularly on college campuses. The increased controversy surrounding Israel emphatically does not excuse its supporters from the obligation to defend it, but it does suggest that we need to choose our battles a bit more carefully than we once did.
There are occasions, of course, when those hostile to Israel attack it in ways that force its defenders to join battle in venues and under circumstances that are disadvantageous to its cause, such as when a mainline Protestant denomination is considering endorsing an anti-Israel boycott. When that happens, Israel’s supporters have no choice but to mobilize, even if the odds of prevailing are less than optimal.
John Jay’s proposed honorary degree to Kushner, however, was not one of those occasions. John Jay’s honoring of Kushner has nothing to do with his views on Israel, and no one would have seen the two as linked but for Wiesenfeld’s ill-advised decision to link them. The ensuing controversy not only created the misimpression that John Jay is endorsing Kushner’s views on Israel, but also placed Israel on what most will see as the wrong side of a battle over freedom of expression. The resulting uproar provided Kushner with an opportunity he would not otherwise have had to reiterate—under guise of clarifying –his anti-Israel views. It also provided opportunities for others of Israel’s enemies to use Wiesenfeld’s actions as additional proof of Israel’s supposed suppression of dissent. To take but one example, Stephen Walt, of Walt-Mearsheimer infamy, used the Kushner controversy as a pretext to reiterate his claim (this time on the website of Foreign Policy) that the denial of Kushner’s proposed honor is “one of the many attempts by self-appointed ‘defenders’ of Israel to control discourse on this issue.”
With all the ink that has been spilled (or its cyber equivalent) in this controversy, one question that I would have thought obvious appears not to have been asked: Why did the faculty of John Jay want to award an honorary degree to Kushner in the first place? That college, according to the mission statement on its web site, is “a liberal arts college dedicated to education, research and service in the fields of criminal justice, fire science and related areas of public safety and public service,” – in none of which areas Kushner has any expertise or involvement. I posed that question to a John Jay student of my acquaintance, but he was mystified as well. Colleges often seek out “big names” for their commencement exercises however irrelevant or inappropriate they may be to the school’s mission, and I suspect that was the primary motivation in this case as well. It’s noteworthy in this context that despite the highly public nature of the controversy, John Jay’s own website remained silent throughout.
The CUNY executive committee’s approval of Kushner’s honorary degree should end the controversy, though I suspect that there will be unusual media interest in the John Jay commencement itself. It’s unlikely that Wiesenfeld’s detractors, despite their hostile rhetoric, will make a serious attempt to oust him from the board (which would expose them as hypocrites jumping on the free speech bandwagon to further a different agenda), and virtually inconceivable that they would succeed even if they tried. For the world at large, the Kushner/John Jay controversy will soon be over.
For the Jewish community, however, the Kushner controversy is a symptom of a much larger malady. This course of events has highlighted yet again the growing divisions within the community as to the boundaries of acceptable criticism of Israel. Jonathan Sarna, the respected American Jewish historian, was quoted in last week’s Jewish Week as saying that “no one knows any longer what the boundaries” of legitimate dissent are. Neither Wiesenfeld nor Kushner created this uncertainty, and the end of their rhetorical combat won’t end it. The internal debate over the boundaries of legitimate criticism of Israel is likely to recur with some regularity in the months and possibly the years ahead. If there is any benefit to be derived from this controversy, it is a timely reminder that Israel’s advocates need to choose their battlegrounds with care.
Douglas Aronin
