The left-wing world loves Tony Kushner, so much so that in two days the New York Times has published three articles about a new controversy surrounding him, one online blog, and a rave review of his latest play that opened in New York City. Kushner is both one of the most overrated and at the same time most honored playwrights working today. He has been the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, an Emmy, an Academy Award, a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and many, many more, including fifteen honorary degrees from other colleges.
Despite this, a furor arose when it was announced a few days ago that the trustees of the City University of New York (CUNY) had voted to shelve an honorary degree that was to be awarded to Kushner by the John Jay College of CUNY, the city’s criminal justice institute, where most students are police officers. As the first national report indicated, Kushner responded by accusing the trustees of slandering him, and demanding an apology. The denial of his honorary degree came after one trustee, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, accused the playwright of holding virulent anti-Israeli views. Wiesenfeld said: “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.”
Kushner called Wiesenfeld’s comment a “vicious attack and wholesale distortion of my beliefs.” Claiming to be a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist, and denying that he favored a boycott of Israel, Kushner added his dismay “that a great public university would make a decision based on slanderous mischaracterizations without giving the person in question a chance to be heard.”
It was typical Kushner — playing the victim of a new McCarthyite attack on him by the right wing. The only problem is that if anyone was distorting Kushner’s actual views, it was the man himself. He has made them so many times, in so many different places, that it is quite easy to document. Fortunately, CAMERA went to the trouble of immediately publishing a compendium of them, which you can read here. Let me just quote one, which immediately reveals that Kushner’s claim to be a strong supporter of Israel is false. “I have a problem with the idea of a Jewish state. It would have been better if it never happened.” Or in another interview, where he told a reporter that the creation of Israel “was a mistake.”
The playwright says he does not support the BDS campaign, yet he sits on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace, which favors the campaign. Yet he continually charges his opponents with falsifying his views, and with using “ ‘McCarthyite’ tactics to portray him as an extremist.” And Kushner is very adept at creating a media frenzy of his supporters, who rush to his defense at a moment’s call.
Hence today’s New York Times, as mentioned, featured a major story by reporter Sharon Otterman, who quoted one after another of Kushner’s defenders, without pausing to even interview one person from CUNY who was supportive of the withdrawal of the honorary degree. If anyone wanted proof of the paper’s bias, this report is it. Yesterday, I was phoned by another reporter at the paper, Winnie M. Hu, who interviewed me at great length. She said she would pass on the material to the reporter who was working on the story. Yet not one word appeared in Otterman’s article; nor did she interview one anyone else at CUNY who did not support Kushner.
As Jonathan Tobin so wisely wrote at Contentions, the withdrawal of the honorary degree “violated the prime directive of Gotham’s cultural elites: Thou shalt not hold any liberal icon accountable for anything they do.” And Tobin points out that this is not any violation of academic freedom, since “there is no constitutional right to an honorary degree.” You wouldn’t know that if you listen to all the screams about McCarthyism coming from CUNY’s leftists.
The latest comes from historian Ellen Schrecker. She sent a letter to Dr. Benno Schmidt, the head of the CUNY Board of Trustees, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, the newspaper read by all of academia, highlighted it in today’s edition. As K.C. Johnson observed accurately yesterday, Schrecker “has made a career out of detecting a non-existent danger of ‘McCarthyism’ in an academic environment in which devotees of her viewpoint dominate. Schrecker asserted that it’s McCarthyism for trustees to exercise their legal authority to confer (or not confer) honorary degrees. Such a bizarre claim suggests that the Yeshiva professor fundamentally misunderstands the topic that has been the subject of so much of her scholarship.”
As if she was seeking to validate Johnson’s description, Schrecker went on to tell the CUNY trustees that “I cannot, therefore, remain silent when the institution that once recognized the value of academic freedom now demeans it. That freedom is more than just the protection of the teaching, research, and public activities of college and university professors. It also extends to the entire campus, fostering the openness and creativity that allow American higher education to flourish.” And of course, Schrecker warns them not to “repeat…those dark days” of the McCarthy era.
Her statement reveals only that, expert as she claims to be, Schrecker does not comprehend the difference between denial of academic freedom and the decision of a university’s trustees to rescind an award granted by one of its institutions. Why is it an “educational priority” to give Tony Kushner this award? Whose freedom is being challenged by its withdrawal? Would Schrecker make the same argument if a white racist who opposed civil rights for African-Americans was given an award, because in his own field- — whatever it might be — that person had done outstanding work? To ask this is to answer it. She would be the first to demand such an award be taken back.
A dubious achievement, made through dubious means, to confer a dubious title on a man of dubious talent and less than dubious character…has what value?
The left must give out its trinkets and endless meaningless awards…not for skill, talent or achievement…but fealty to the cult.
Picking on Israel and America gives you extra points. Being a hypocrite and a liar is a prerequisite. Leftists love awards ceremonies, it gives them a chance to pat themselves on the back for all the slander and treason they’ve achieved in the previous year.
cfbleachers-Read the article, was going to post, but then read your excellent post.
Nothing more needs to be added.
I just hope that anybody with money to spend and a modicum of common sense will choose NOT to attend CUNY, and NOT pay for their offspring to go there, and NOT contribute any money to it, and NOT offer employment to any former CUNY faculty or staff without first checking their background and activities with extreme care.
Bravo…for the article..if anyone deserve an award from CCNY it Ronald Rodash who comes out on the side of truth regardless how many phonies jump up and down.
“Was this any way for one of the great public universities of the world to discuss the views of one of the leading dramatists of modern times, author of the epic “Angels in America’?”
Wrong question. Rather, does criticism of Israel disqualify you from receiving an honorary degree from an American university?
“Would Schrecker make the same argument if a white racist who opposed civil rights for African-Americans was given an award….”
This erases the line between anti-Israel criticism and anti-Semitism.
RR is a master of the irrelevant and (inadvertently) funny pile-on attack:
‘Another supporter of Kushner is the University Faculty Senate Chair Sandi Cooper, the wife of the late John Cammet, the former pro-communist Dean of Faculty at John Jay for many years, who regularly called himself “The Red Dean,” a play on the name given in the 1940’s and 50’s to the pro-Communist Dean of Canterbury of the Anglican Church in Britain, who was a notorious fellow-traveler.’
An echo, no doubt, from his commie days. Why not just label her “Wife of an Enemy of the People” and be done with it?
“This erases the line between anti-Israel criticism and anti-Semitism.”
There is no difference, if you are referring to the type of “criticism” favored by leftists. “Criticism” which is couched in terms of “questioning Israel’s right to exist”—which Kushner’s statements that “the creation of Israel was a mistake” certainly fall within—or which is grounded in promulgating the complete frauds of “the seige of Gaza,” the “oppression of the (nonexistent) ‘Palestinian people’,” the falsehood of calling Israel “an apartheid state,” etc., etc., is antisemitism, gussied up in language which is designed to give cover to apologists for the genocidal dreams of the Arabs.
The kind of “criticism” of Israel mentioned here, so ostentatiously absent from discussions of any other country in the world, is in fact not criticism at all, but demonisation.
Nice work taking away Tony Kushner’s narcissistic supply. Maybe if we annoy these retards enough they’ll explode from sheer “criticism” – ooops, I mean accurate diagnosis – overdose.
By accurate diagnosis, I mean, of course, calling them out for the sleazy fraudulent lying stalkers they are.
That’s your job, I think.
“This erases the line between anti-Israel criticism and anti-Semitism.”?
The line’s genuine, Joseph, but only theoretical to date. The next time I see it uncrossed will be the first.
“Rather, does criticism of Israel disqualify you from receiving an honorary degree from an American university?”
No actually it increases your odds.
Wrong question. Rather, does criticism of Israel disqualify you from receiving an honorary degree from an American university?
No but it should: no normal person would have sympathy for people who dance in the streets after learning some of their “heroes” have stabbed a whole family including a baby in his craddle and a two yeas old (happened about a month ago); no normal person would lose sleep over the fate of people who have been for sixty years growing fat on international aid all while in Darfur people are starving. Starving as in dying., No normal person would lose sleep over Israel’s handling of Palestinins with kid gloves all while Copts are being murdered and Darfuiris slaughtered and raped by the thousands. No normal person would give a damn about people who educate their children for genocide and for finishing Hitler’s job. Not unless they shared that dream. There should be no place in universities for people who want to give awards to a Nazi.
This erases the line between anti-Israel criticism and anti-Semitism.
Sorry but there is none. I still ahev to see one of those “critics of Israel who are not antisemites” care about what Arabs do to Blacks in Sudan, about what Sadam did to Kurds, about what sri lankese do to Tamuls or what Taliban did to Hazara. And iot is not noraml antisemitsism since some staunch antisemites saved Jews during WWII. No, it is antisemitism of the kind who wants Jews being exterminated (some Jews a la Soros or Chomski consider thelmseleve non-Jewish enough to share this goal). Same kind as Hitker’s.
Here’s how far you are from winning the fight – whatever year immigration is stopped. I’m guessing I’ll be dead at least 2 generations before anyone even thinks about it.
By that time we’ll have 1 billion people in a happy melting pot of diversity and multiculturalism that’ll make “Blade Runner” look like “Up With People” on a grassy hillside and white people will be living in houses they have to lift up on giant hydraulic poles every night to stop from being killed by the professional guild of assassins they’ll have then like John Carter’s Mars.
does one get an honorary debt to go with the honorary degree?
Tailgunner Joe was a great American. He may have been loud and crass, but he was right. Communism has infiltrated America at nearly every level. Especially in academia. Forget about taking back government. Time to take back the school boards and those who establish curricula.
G-d help us.
JJ-I hear Arizona is making its mark,parents are indeed up in arms over the Commie infiltration.The fight was so vicious that tactical police units were called in.
The leftist infiltrators have decided that the kiddies must be taught Commie/Marxist orthodoxy and that’s that.They are told to shut up and be good little peasants. HOWEVER, outraged parents beg to differ and the real fight will be when the local school board has its vote.
The outcome of this fight-as well as others-will determine the future of America.True, the infiltrators in the Federal gov’t-and their leftist shock troops-can create much mischief, BUT the parents can make their lives miserable in the process.So, involved, outraged parents may turn the tide if they stay vigilant.
Time will tell how many take up the charge.
Well said, you are right, except that I think it’s too late. The American character that existed in the 1930′s is now a small minority, the deconstruction is too advanced. There will be only one outcome of the Depression of the second decade of the 2000′s, it will be an America ruled by a totalitarian wielding ruling class.
Well, it could end happily — the re-vote hasn’t taken place yet. But if it goes Kushner’s way, oh God. Will he get to make a speech? Can you imagine what a smug, sanctimonious bowl of gruel that will be?
Sad to say, America has never produced an outstanding Jewish playwright. Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, David Mamet–they’re all lightweights whose popularity has not or won’t outlive the shallow intellectual and cultural fashions of their time.
Odets continues to be produced here and there but only to satisfy Jewish lefty nostalgia for the crude communist propaganda of the good old days of tenements and sweatshops. Miller’s drek enjoys periodic revival and students continue to have his false analogy between Mccarthyism and witch-hunting drilled into them (witches were the scary product of superstitious imagination; Communists are very real and genuinely dangerous) but one more generation and Miller will be (properly) forgotten. Mamet, belated political epiphany notwithstanding, will be deservedly forgotten in his own lifetime.
Tony Kushner, who adds a contemporary touch of flit to the traditional leftist flackery, isn’t worth the fuss he’s creating. The entire affair at CUNY is merely a tempest in a Jewish chainik. Only Jews and obsessive anti-Semites care about the outcome. After all, what is the worth of an award from CUNY? Years ago, when Brooklyn College was the Harvard of the poor, honors by CUNY had weight. But the same red and black tide that destroyed the best primary and secondary school system in the nation at Ocean-Hill Brownsville destroyed CUNY.
With apologies to Dr. Radosh, an award from CUNY aint worth a bucket of piss.
David Levavi,
Come on, an award from CUNY is certainly worth a bucket of piss.
Precisely.
Theoretically possible … maybe. Whose piss are we discussing here?
Iguess that depends upon whether you buy your bucket at Walmart or The Sharper image.
“Only Jews and obsessive anti-Semites care . . .”
The world population today is about 7 billion, and 1/4 to maybe even 1/3 of them are obsessive anti-Semites. Jews number only about 13.5 million. So if Jews care, it’s no trivial matter, Mr. David Levavi.
Amusing point. Nonetheless I would insist that any award from the Shitty University of New York remains trivial.
I don’t know what your criteria for great playwriting is, let alone “great Jewish playwriting,” but I think you’re being just a wee mite facile here. You may not like “The Crucible” for its McCarthy parallels, but it’s still a moving play—as, in my opinion, is “Death of a Salesman.” Odets may be primarily known for “Waiting for Lefty,” but “The Country Girl” is pretty good, and not visibly agitprop.
But if you’re going to look at “Jewish playwrights,” you also have to look at Ben Hecht, whose “The Front Page” remains superb—and is well worth watching in the original Pat O’Brien/Adolphe Menjou screen version. You also have to think about Kaufman and Hart, Vernon Duke, SJ Perelman—the whole bunch of playwrights, songsmiths and playwright/songsmiths who not only were the soul of Broadway in its heyday, but the backbone of light film entertainment and the basis of much of early television. Better throw Paddy Chayefsky in there, too.
None of these playwrights—even Odets and Miller at their most turgid—were as dully strident or as overtly self-hating as Kushner. Nor were they so impoverished as to have to stump along using four-letter words as a crutch, as Mamet, alas, does.
A) McCarthy was right – and the left know it.
B) Miller thought he was portraying the abused little man, victimized by the “bourgeois.” What I saw was a petty man who lied, cheated and stole his way through life and taught his children likewise. Then had the audacity to whine when his contemporaries prospered due to their hard work and strong ethics. How dare they!
Sad to say, lolly, your response is both silly and irrelevant. Leaving aside the issue of whether “McCarthy was right”—despite the many communists in government, McCarthy himself never snagged a one—that has absolutely nothing to do with the merits, or lack of merit, in Miller’s play The Crucible. That the play was written as a Leftist McCarthy allegory is wholly beside the point; the hysteria and guilt-by-association it describes is equally relevant when looking at modern-day accusations of “racism,” “homophobia,” and “Islamophobia,” those blanket epithets so beloved by the Left. And the drama of a man deciding what he is, or is not, willing to do to keep what he believes to be his integrity remains valid.
Likewise, the drama in Death of a Salesman is not diminished by the fact that Willy Loman is by no means an admirable character. It is the story of a little man who is alternately deluded by the Big Dreams he has which are beyond his capacity, and aware that he falls short of his own ideals in almost every respect—as well as the question of which of his sons is the true inheritor of his delusions.
Seeing these works merely as agitprop is a measure of your own limitations, not the limitations of the works themselves.
Tail Gunner Joe didn’t snag anyone because smart commies don’t carry party cards. As for agitprop, I heard Miller in interviews years ago and agitprop exactly was his intention. Odets’ propagandist intentions are beyond dispute. I would also argue that command of four letter words and street talk in general is Mamet’s outstanding talent.
David Levavi: Like lolly, you miss the point.
Artists famously are not the best assessors of their own work. Regardless of the intention of the dramatist, the work may well transcend the intentions. Agitprop was Miller’s objective, you say—and I don’t for a minute deny it. But, like lolly, you are too blinkered in your hatred of the Left to recognize that the Miller’s play, regardless of his original intent, transcends his objectives, and that—as I noted earlier—is equally applicable to guilt-by-association epithets now routinely hurled by the Left, and is, furthermore, about a man’s personal struggle with whether or not to sell his honor in exchange for safety.
I am less familiar with Odets, but I saw no agitprop in “The Country Girl,” and precious little of it in “Golden Boy.” I am sure it is more blatant in some of Odets’ other works, but just as I can enjoy the film “Key Largo” for the drama and performances despite Maxwell Anderson’s script being a blatant Leftist morality play, I am sure that there is some small measure of quality in Odets as there is in Miller. For that matter, I continue to enjoy “Casablanca,” despite its being a Popular Front cartoon.
Kushner, alas, cannot hold a candle to these craftsmen of an earlier era whom your politics drive you to despise. He is shallow, crude, blatant and dull.
There are many who think that the creation of Kushner and his fellow-travellers was a historic mistake.
I was surprised to see a book at the library listing its author as “Dr.” Rubin Carter. I hadn’t heard that Rubin Carter had earned a Ph.D. and it turned out he hasn’t. He calls himself “Dr.” on the basis of honorary degrees from universities in Toronto and Brisbane. I gave his book an “honorary” reading, which is to say, I left it on the shelf.
Nowadays, an honorary degree from any university means about as much as “Employee of the Month” at Burger King. It might mean something to the donor and the donee, but to the rest of us it’s wallpaper if not toilet paper.
After having read such books as ‘Dupes’, which translates the Verona Files from the USSR’s cache of Communist Party USA related materials, every time I see ‘McCarthyism’ used, I know the person is either ignorant of the true history or is hoping everyone else is.
Literary criticism calls such works as Kushner’s ‘morality plays’, which have always been deemed non-serious and 3rd class literature. When such tripe invaded television after the VietNam era, people stopped watching, leading to the prevalence of ‘reality shows’, this change paralleled the decline in movies which crudely propagandized.
No one wants to be preached to by others under the banner of ‘entertainment’, so in time, such works masquerading as literature will be left to history.
Tony Kushner’s Jewish Anti-Semitic Chic is all the rage in the arts and academia.
Kushner’s defenders offer the typically boring and repetitive elitist arguments always offered by typically unreasonable elitists who only support their own ideology and have little use for freedom of thought unless it supports their own jaded and unsupportable intellectual views and image of the society they want.
And while the elitists and leftists are yapping about McCarthyism, how horrible it was, and thus seek the “civil right” of one of their own to have an honorary degree and not be denied by such tactics. it might be well to note that one of their heroes, Robert Kennedy, was a close associate of Senator McCarthy on the House Un-American Activities Committee. Mr. Kennedy worked for the Senator on that committee as a lawyer and was so close to him personally that Kennedy asked the Senator to be the godfather of his first child. McCarthy was extremely close to the entire Kennedy clan – so close that he dated one of the Kennedy daughters and old Joe Kennedy contributed time and considerable money to his campaigns in Wisconsin.
It was also Joe Kennedy who was pulled back from his Ambassadorship in England by FDR because Kennedy publicly lauded Hitler and National Socialism. That event ended Joe Kennedy’s ability to seek the Presidency, and so the mantle fell to his sons instead. Ideology always is practiced to suit one’s own desires and purposes, i.e., that of Lenin and Mao and Stalin and yes, Hitler and his ilk too, – including the now late bin Laden
Seeing the direction the world is moving today, and especially America, perhaps the last bastion against world totalitarianism, I wonder now whether Joe McCarthy wasn’t right in his warnings, as more recent historians of that period and him have argued.. He just used bad tactics to make his points.
So I suppose they would have endorsed a honorary degree for Dr Mengele and his pioneering medical research? Such stands by academics contribute the lowered esteem that group is now held in. You do not need advanced degrees to see the hypocrisy that many in academia exude these days. They are blatantly intolerant while accusing others of intolerance. To accuse others of McCarthyism in an attempt to suppress views you disagree with is beyond ironic.
Good piece Ron.
Kushner should be rejected not only because of his putrid, hateful ideas, but because he is a charletan. He is an anti-model for students, a flashy clutural whore. CUNY deserves better.
I grew up with Tony Kushner. I did not know him well but I liked his father. As far as “Angles in America” is concerned I consider it a play about queers.
They are still queers as they were called in my day and I don’t use the word gay. As far as honorary degrees who cares. I got my doctorate degree by earning it. An honorary degree means NOTHING. WHO CARES. As to the State of Israel the bible says God gave them that land. As for the State of Israel’s saying, “Never again” I am with them 100% even though I will be 72 very soon.
wow. it’s this type of discussion about discussing Israel…and the way that left-wing people are demonized, and the hatred between people who disagree, that makes the average jew like myself, not want to ever engage in a discussion about Israel. Way too dangerous. Why do we have to put Kushner and his work down and call leftists retards and….it makes me uncomfortable to explore issues/discuss history when this is the intellectual environment it’s done in.
Get over yourself, Tamara, and stop doing the fainting-flower act.
Leftists are excoriated because they adhere to, and/or apologize for, policies which are pernicious. If you want to defend the indefensible, you should feel free to do so—but you should expect the appropriate flak. Kushner is entirely within his right to believe that, as he has said, “the creation of Israel was a mistake,” but others are equally entitled to excoriate him for holding that view. That Kushner expresses this opinion as a wholly secular Jew, and trades on his minimal “Jewishness”—something he can claim only by virtue of the dictates of a religion he does not practice—is, to some people, myself included, hypocritical and morally disgusting. That Kushner, like so many Leftists, makes common cause with the genocidal Arabs who are direct inheritors of a Nazi ideology, and preens for doing so, is also disgusting.
Time for an update, Ron.
What I find amusing in all this bruhaha is the notion that CUNY is somehow a great institution of higher learning! While once the jewel in the crown of New York education, it has disintegrated into one of the worst university systems in the US. And even more laughable – the endlessly smug, overrated Mr. Kushner was being honored by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice – not exactly Juilliard, lol. Stupid, small man should have just let it go.