One of the most important aspects of the Tony Kushner story is the great fear that CUNY’s decision has created in the playwright about potential damage to his reputation. As he wrote to CUNY administrators, “I believe I am owed an apology for the careless way in which my name and reputation were handled at your meeting.”
What is that damage? Per the New York Times story on the matter (emphasis mine):
The vote on Monday evening came after a CUNY trustee [Jeffrey Wiesenfeld] said that Mr. Kushner had disparaged the State of Israel in past comments, a characterization that the writer attacked on Wednesday…
A leading artist is afraid when someone says that he has disparaged a foreign country. I’d point out that back in January, Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation organized a bigwigs’ letter that urged Obama to condemn Israeli settlement-building in the U.N. Security Council– a letter that of course failed– and that Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post derided Clemons as an “Israel-basher.”
The comment unnerved Clemons, who is a leading Washington Democrat,and much as Kushner has appealed to CUNY, Clemons called on The Washington Post to retract the charge. He wrote:
Calling someone an Israel-basher is akin to calling them an anti-Semite or a bigot, and that can’t go without response.
And here is Kushner, per the Times:
Kushner… said that he was “dismayed by the vicious attack and wholesale distortion of my beliefs.” He has criticized policies and actions by Israel in the past, and said that he believed — based on research by Israeli historians — that the forcible removal of Palestinians from their homes as part of the creation of Israel was ethnic cleansing. But he added that he was a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist, that he had never supported a boycott of the country, and that his views were shared by many Jews and supporters of Israel.
