Alan Levine is a NY lawyer who brought Debbie Almontaser’s lawsuit against the NY Dept of Education because of her dismissal from the Kahlil Gibran International Academy [KGIA]. Here he is in Haaretz, writing about the recent Tony Kushner honorary degree flap at the City University of New York, and saying that Jews are “dishonored” by a blind defense of Israel. Excerpt:
CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who led the opposition to the Kushner award, was an overwrought opponent of KGIA as well. When a KGIA supporter, a rabbi, angrily differed with him at a public rally, Wiesenfeld suggested that the rabbi “get yourself a suicide bomb and go blow yourself up.” So much for the man who thought Tony Kushner’s views on Israel were not rational.
Then earlier this year there was the case of Kristofer Petersen-Overton, a Brooklyn College adjunct professor hired by the political science department to teach a course on the Middle East. Although the department had approved Petersen-Overton’s credentials and the proposed course, NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind wrote the college that Petersen-Overton was “an overt supporter of terrorism.” The college promptly canceled the course. After letters of protest poured in from around the world, it was reinstated. Although the college’s capitulation to Hikind represented a serious assault on academic freedom in the name of pro-Israel orthodoxy, not a single mainstream Jewish organization spoke out.
And now Tony Kushner’s honorary degree. The CUNY trustees, after a firestorm of criticism, have admitted error. But how did it happen in the first place? Wiesenfeld is only one vote. What accounts for the initial acquiescence of Benno Schmidt, CUNY’s board chair, who, as a former president of Yale and a First Amendment scholar, knows the stifling impact on academic freedom when universities capitulate to demands of political orthodoxy?
There is a clue in his statement calling for the reinstatement of Kushner’s honorary degree. While acknowledging that a candidate’s political views are irrelevant to the awarding of honorary degrees, Schmidt gratuitously added, “If it were appropriate for us to take politics into account in deciding whether to approve an honorary degree, I might agree with Trustee Wiesenfeld, whose political views on the matters in controversy are not far distant from my own.” Having said that Wiesenfeld’s extremist political views are irrelevant, he proceeded to establish his own pro-Israel orthodoxy. That the board chair of a distinguished university is compelled to establish that he is “sufficiently pro-Israel” says that something is terribly wrong with the current climate of discourse about Israel and its policies.
Two Jews, three opinions, is the old adage. On “everything but Israel,” is the present reality. Despite its belief to the contrary, neither the Jewish community nor Israel is well-served by that reality. Mainstream Jewry is dishonored by having the likes of Wiesenfeld and Hikind be its public voice on such matters, and by insisting that unquestioning and irrational loyalty to Israel substitute for rational debate and a commitment to what is just.
