cuny has ditched tony kushner from its graduation ceremony (=honorary degree) on the grounds that he's "disparaged the state of israel." sometimes i agree that new york should secede from the union, or that it already has. or maybe it should just be annexed by "the state of israel." obviously the settlements in manhattan are expanding. yo i wonder what the propaganda value is supposed to be of always using the phrase "the state of israel."
“I think it’s up to all of us to look at fairness and consider these things,” Mr. Wiesenfeld said. “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.”
just for the hell of it, i'll point out that turkey is a democracy. but what you're doing with trustees that just mutter word-for-word the propaganda of other governments, or engage in exclusions or repressions of speech to enforce the conventional yapyap of their bureaucrats, is a question cuny should ask itself.
while we're at it, we might ask what the attitude of the state of israel actually is to the spread of democracy among their neighbors. at any rate, the question here is whether kushner's positions as articulated disqualify him for an honorary degree from an american public university. i would have said that the idea that they do is ridiculous.
