Updates and Expansions

Time to re-visit and update some older posts:

LeBron James.

Last July 10, one of three stories I talked about was the fact that LeBron James was “tak[ing] his talents to South Beach,” abandoning the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in search of riches and a championship (in that order, although of course he’d never say so).

My assessment at the time: “while he is unquestionably an outstanding athlete, he just flat gets outplayed (or matched by those of considerably lesser talent) when it matters most.” The finals aren’t over yet, and the Heat, trailing 3-2 as I write this, could still emerge victorious, but it won’t matter in terms of James’s legacy: he still choked when it counted. His Larry Bird numbers for the series have averaged a little under 359. (I wrote last spring, “A good score, one you’d expect consistently from a star player, is 500. A really good game, the kind you’d expect not infrequently from a superstar, is 750. A put-the-team-on-his-back-and-carry-them number is 1000.”)

James’s best game was a 600 in game 1, the only time he’s broken 500. He didn’t crack 200 in either of the losses in Dallas. His direct opposite number, i.e. the starting small forward for the Mavs, Shawn Marion has averaged a 382, including two games over 500. The plus/minus numbers for the series: James -12, Marion +10. Shawn Marion is a good basketball player, but he’s nobody’s superstar, and he has flat outplayed LeBron James. The Mavs’ best player, Dirk Novitzki, has averaged over 593, with his only sub-500 game a 359 when he was running a high fever; his plus/minus is +44. Even more compelling evidence comes from Mark Stein of ESPN:

In what NBA statisticians recognize as "clutch time," which equates to the final five minutes of regulation or overtime with the score within five points either way, Nowitzki has 26 points on 8-for-13 shooting from the field and 9-for-9 accuracy at the line.

LeBron? After leading the league in this category through the first three rounds of the playoffs and finally chipping away at the skepticism about his ability to close, James has zero points on 0-for-7 shooting and is still waiting for his first "clutch time" trip to the line.

So let’s cut the nonsense about LeBron James being a superstar. If the Heat win, it will be because of Dwyane Wade, who has averaged a 740 (in a stat that privileges post players), and whose worst game, a 605 in game 1, was better than James’s best.

Tony Kushner.

As predicted here on May 7, Tony Kushner did indeed receive an honorary degree from CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice last weekend. I can find no evidence, however, to support my prediction that “on June 3, John Jay’s graduation day, Mr. [Benno] Schmidt [chair of the CUNY Board of Trustees] and Mr. Kushner will be joining hands and singing ‘Kumbaya.’”

There was a good deal of misrepresentation of the Board’s initial action to deny the degree: as I suggested on May 17, charges that academic freedom had been violated were tossed about with more fervor than accuracy. But there did seem to be some conception that a playwright’s political views ought not to determine the legitimacy of his candidacy for an honor, and that the legitimate function of Trustees is not to advance political agendas or to interfere in the day to day operations of a university. This is not to say that Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld didn’t have his supporters: the New York Times reports that there was “a small group of protesters” at the John Jay graduation ceremony, and I suspect that the Curmudgeon Central Facebook page wasn’t the only one to get its share of conflicting commentary.

H.S.

I am pleased to report that the news is spreading about the cheerleader kicked off the squad for refusing to cheer for her rapist by name, discussed here on May 13. I’ve engaged in a handful of Facebook debates with friends of friends. I doubt that I’ve convinced anyone, but perhaps I successfully encouraged someone to make a contribution or sign the petition. Somebody is doing something right, as the legal fund now tops $15,000 and there are nearly 68,000 signatures on the petition. There’s no justice to be achieved here, but there is support and communion, which are far better than the alternative. Sign. Give.

Kathy Hochul.

Democrat Kathy Hochul not only won the special election in the New York 26th, she did so with relative ease. As I predicted on the morning of the race, May 24, apologists for the loser bellowed full-throatedly about how their candidate really did marvelously well: since the loser in question was the Republican, Jane Corwin, the ululation was from the right. Here’s my prediction: “And his [Jack Davis’s] presence will be blamed for a Republican defeat, should there be one.” Right on cue, Karl Rove sniffed after the election that “Absent Mr. Davis as a spoiler—he got 9% of the vote—Democrats would never have made a serious bid for this district, nor won if they did.” Rove points out that Davis spent $3 million of his own money, and that Hochul “won a plurality (47%) of the votes, not a majority, getting only one percentage point more than Barack Obama as he was losing the district in 2008. Not exactly a compelling performance.”

Karl Rove is not stupid, but he is certainly disingenuous: he leaves out the part about Jane Corwin’s self-funding to the tune of $2.76 million, or the $1.36 million contributed to Corwin’s campaign by the likes of Rove’s own American Crossroads (nearly $700,000). Mr. Rove would like to have it both ways: if the Democrats wouldn’t have “made a serious bid” in the absence of a candidate who didn’t break double-digits, then it should be a safe seat for Republicans. Despite substantially outspending Hochul, Corwin couldn’t win a district in which the GOP has a 7 point enrollment advantage and which subsequently-disgraced Congressman Chris Lee won by 51 points less than seven months earlier. Oh, and by the way, Karl, the Dems did OK in that 2008 election: doing “only” one point better (as a percentage of the total) in a three-way race than Barack Obama did in a de facto two-way race is a result the Democrats will take 10 times out of 10.

Let me also repeat the point I made the day of the election:

Davis is indeed the largely liberal “fraud” the national Tea Party claims him to be. But let’s look at the ramifications of that statement. In an informed electorate, that would mean that his third-party candidacy would draw votes from Hochul, not Corwin. That the GOP is screaming foul can be taken as proof that the Republicans (rightly) regard a significant percentage of Tea Partiers as completely uninformed and/or stupid. Only someone who didn’t know the candidates would vote for Davis over Corwin thinking he was the more conservative choice.

Finally, there’s there Republican push-back about “Mediscare” tactics, accusing the Democrats in general and Hochul in particular of trying to terrify people with horror stories about what would happen if Paul Ryan’s budget were actually to be enacted. The only reasonable conclusion is not that Hochul misrepresented GOP ideology (she didn’t, at least not substantively, as far as I can tell—not that the truth matters much to anyone on the right or to many on the left). Rather, given the re-election tactics of Bush-Cheney, and subsequently the totally fabricated “death panel” and “Obama is a socialist” arguments, it would seem that the Republican hierarchy is staking their claim that purely emotional, fact-free scare tactics, especially about healthcare, are their exclusive purview: Hochul’s crime wasn’t perjury, but copyright violation.

Anthony Weiner.

Of course, there wouldn’t have been a special election if Chris Lee hadn’t been the Craigslist Creeper… which brings us to the unfortunately named Anthony Weiner, whose escapades on Twitter are tawdry and pathetic at best. Political leaders and pundits are calling on the Congressman to resign: every Republican you can think of (curiously enough, many of these people were strangely silent about David Vitter when he actually committed—and admitted to—a sex-related crime), but also a growing list of Democrats: former DNC chair Tim Kaine, Pennsylvania Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz, former PA governor Ed Rendell, and a steady trickle of others until the big announcement today that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz are joining the chorus.

Everyone, in other words, thinks Weiner should resign. Everyone, that is, except Mr. Weiner himself and the Congressman’s constituents, who are in pragmatic terms the only ones who matter until there is a House Ethics Committee hearing and/or criminal charges. (At present, at least, the former is likely to lead to some form of censure but not expulsion; the latter seems to be a non-starter.) And polls show that whereas the city of New York as a whole is roughly evenly divided, with a plurality thinking Rep. Weiner should step down (N.B., another poll taken the same day had very different results), voters in the New York 9th want him to stay by a pretty convincing 56-33%. That bodes well for the Congressman’s ability to stick it out (if you’ll pardon the expression) for a while at least. And, really, the way politics works these days, if he survives one election after the scandal, the sexting issue disappears unless he chooses to run for a different office (a majority of NYC Democrats don’t want him to run for mayor, for example). Or until he does it again. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Jack Scott.

And that… sort of… brings us to the ongoing saga of Cordova, AL, mayor Jack Scott’s refusal to allow FEMA single-wide trailers into his tornado-devastated town, discussed here on June 2. Well, no single-wide trailers except the ones like the one his office is in. The connection to Weiner? A great line from “reality5000” cited by Julie Clark on the al.com website this Thursday: “In other words, the Mayor’s mantra is ‘Don't do as I do, do as I say’ as he stands in front of the trailers he brought in. That is about like Anthony Weiner telling you to keep your clothes on and behave.”

There would appear to be a number of easy solutions, none of which the politicians can wrap their heads around. How difficult is it, after all, to say: “Look, we know you need short-term help, but we’re concerned that these trailers will be here forever. So we’re going to grant a waiver for 24 months. That should be enough time to get you back on your feet. After that, you’ll be in violation of town ordinances, and you’ll be subject to fines, forfeiture, and even possibly arrest.” That Scott won’t sign off on such a plan suggests that he’s suspicious of the town’s willingness to back him up down the road—maybe he fears (accurately, one hopes) that someone else will be mayor by then. Either that, or he’s a fool, a charlatan, or the most hard-hearted bastard you’ll ever meet.

Curiously enough, there are those who support the mayor—I think we can take as given that they’re the lucky folks whose homes weren’t destroyed: it’s a little easier for them to get all hoity-toity about long-term property values. Anybody wanna bet these people all show up at the Baptist Church on Sunday mornings and don’t recognize themselves as the Pharisees the preacher is railing against?

The Haitian Minimum Wage.

Finally, we now have a link to the full story in The Nation by Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives on the attempt to raise the minimum wage in Haiti to 62¢ an hour and the conniption thrown by not only the US textile industry, whom we expect to make Uriah Heep look cuddly by comparison, but also by the US Embassy, whom we do not.

I mean, seriously, the new Haitian minimum wage would still be 8%, yes, 8% of the American minimum wage. And we’re supposed to believe scumbags like chargé d’affaires Thomas C. Tighe that “an HTG 200 Haitian gourde minimum wage would make the sector economically unviable and consequently force factories to shut down”? This guy deserves to be choked to death on the Hanes underwear he really represents—it surer than hell isn’t in American interests to have a neighbor so destitute, not to mention justifiably angry. Not to mention the fundamental question: where are they going to go? You got somebody someplace who’ll work for less, assholes?

The key point here remains, however, that this is the US government behaving in this despicable manner. The greed and amorality of Levi Strauss, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom are, of course, manifest. That they would be supported in their arrogance, their acquisitiveness, and their extortion by the American government, especially by representatives of a Democratic President, is beyond unconscionable.

Academic Freedom: What It Is and Isn't

One of the essential tenets of philosophical Taoism is the notion of the yin and the yang: that idea that opposites define each other. There can be no light without a concept of dark, no male without female, no strength without weakness, and so on. Indeed, a room, for example, is defined both by its boundaries rather than itself, and by the relative size of the nothingness it contains. I have, of course, been reminded of this concept this spring in teaching a course in Asian theatre, but recent events have called it to the forefront of my mind.

Specifically, I’ve been contemplating the concept of academic freedom in these terms: that is, for it to exist, it must also not exist. In other words, there must be activities which it covers and, importantly, activities it does not—I can discuss ideas and even express opinions without fear of losing my job over it (or at least I can do so since having been tenured), but that doesn’t mean I can do whatever the hell I want in my classroom. For one thing, as the Renaissance humanists as well as the Taoist sages made clear, there is no freedom without restraint: it is ontologically impossible for me to have freedom to punch you in the nose and simultaneously for you to be free from being thus punched. Moreover, in the specific context of academic freedom, since my freedom would be mere chaos without some boundaries, the imposition of those boundaries does not inherently abridge my rights, even if I disagree with the regulations in question.

Stanley Fish has an interesting opinion piece in today’s New York Times in which he looks at three recent cases in which the term “academic freedom” has been tossed around. As it happens, I’ve written about two of them, and come to pretty much the same conclusions as Fish (I should note that I seldom agree with Dr. Fish, at least to this extent): the brouhaha at the City University of New York about whether Tony Kushner would receive an honorary degree, and the Koch-funded gift to Florida State with a few too many strings attached.

On the former, here’s me:

I’ve been following the excellent coverage of George Hunka on this story, [who] makes the excellent point that “It is not a case of censorship or suppression…. Nor is it an attempt to render Kushner, his work and opinions invisible”…. the CUNY trustees generated their own personal tempest by being remarkably bone-headed.

And here’s Fish:

It was just the board screwing up with the predictable public-relations disaster as the result. No one’s freedom was curtailed, no one’s speech was censored, no harm, except to the board’s reputation and by extension to CUNY’s, was done.

On the Florida State case, me:

… the real blame attaches to David W. Rasmussen, the dean of the College of Social Sciences, who sees nothing wrong with selling out his program’s integrity: “it seems to me it would have been irresponsible not to do it.” No, sir, what is irresponsible is chasing after dollars, even a lot of them, at the expense of the university’s control over its own curriculum.

And Fish:

Rasmussen says he is “sure some faculty will say this is not exactly consistent with their view of academic freedom.” The implication is that “their view” is a minority view or an over-fastidious view, but the view that university hiring and firing procedures shouldn’t dance to the tune of an external constituency is absolutely mainstream and is the core of what academic freedom stands for.

There are two more cases, one of which I hadn’t heard about, but which Fish references. Quoting here:

In early March, Professor John Michael Bailey of Northwestern University invited a couple to perform a live sex-act in front of the students in his course on Human Sexuality. (Attendance at the presentation was optional.) The man brought the (naked) woman to orgasm with the help of a device with a name this newspaper will not print.

Bailey defended himself by saying that such “events” provide “useful examples and extensions of concepts students learn about in traditional academic ways.” This statement amounts to acknowledging that the live-sex demonstration was outside the boundaries of academic practice (Bailey might respond that he was stretching the envelope) and it’s an easy step to conclude that it is not protected by academic freedom, by an instructor’s freedom to bring into a class whatever materials he thinks appropriate so long as they serve a legitimate pedagogical end. Bailey claims the live-sex demo did serve such an end because it was an extension of one of his course’s main themes, the diversity of sexual experience.

OK, give me a fucking break. (Or, same words, different order: Give me a break! Fucking?) You cannot convince me that this little escapade had anything whatsoever to do with a legitimate course function. It was voyeurism in the cause of professorial popularity/edginess/whatever, and nothing else. Therefore, as Professor Fish points out, it’s not covered by academic freedom, because “academic freedom is for academic activities and not for everything that happens to go on in a university building.”

No, re-assigning this prof to other courses is not a suppression of free speech, a violation of academic freedom, or anything like that. It is, in fact, a gift. He should simply have been fired. And whereas it is silly not to offer the course in the upcoming year based on the fact that it was once taught by a charlatan, putting the class on hold for a year neither disrespects the subject matter nor violates any tenets of appropriate academic conduct. Those who say otherwise, in Fish’s words, “are behaving as so many in the Kushner controversy did; they are crying academic freedom whenever a university does something they don’t like, and by doing so, they cheapen the concept.”

Finally, we come to a case Fish doesn’t mention. This is the episode at two University of Missouri campuses at which Judy Ancel (Kansas City) and Don Giljum (St. Louis) team-teach via electronic interaction a course in labor studies. The ever-despicable Andrew Breitbart (guess what?) deceptively edited some tapes he had no right to have access to in the first place, and smeared the two faculty members as advocates of violence. (There’s a good demonstration of the specifics here.) But, as I said in linking to the just-mentioned video clip on the Curmudgeon Central Facebook page,

This isn't about Andrew Breitbart being a pathological liar. We knew that. It's about a university system believing in a thoroughly discredited, ultra-partisan, utterly immoral dirtbag like Breitbart over their own faculty until it was proved AGAIN that Breitbart would have to evolve to be pond scum, and that they were innocent of his accusations.

Given the fact that it appears Mr. Giljum was pressured into offering his resignation ("conditionally," whatever that means), it certainly appears that the Mizzou hierarchy panicked first and asked questions later.

More importantly, there are a host of legitimate scenaria whereby a professor might advocate (or pretend to advocate) violence, just as there are a host of legitimate scenaria whereby a law school professor might construct a hypothetical story about killing his dean. There might be a comparison to the perceived need for violence among some members of the civil rights movement, or the Irish Republican Army, or even the colonial militias of the American Revolution. Or maybe the prof just wants someone in that class to argue that violence isn’t the answer: a little engagement in an issue can go a long way.

But even if a professor really was arguing that violence is “just another tactic,” as it was for someone quoted by Professor Ancel (hence the “matter-of-factness” complained about by right-wing bloggers), I’d argue that such an assertion is precisely what academic freedom is designed to protect: provided, of course, that the course instructors do not require their students to agree with their conclusions. I offer my opinions all the time in class; most of the time, I reiterate that opinions are different than facts. Sometimes I don’t. But, significantly, I know where the weak points of my own point of view are: I often tell students that agreeing with me for all the right reasons is probably good for a B+. If you want an A, you’d better disagree with me for the right reasons.

But what I do in my classroom isn’t completely relevant, although I suspect that I’m not the only faculty member in the country who wonders whether today is the day that some student will show up in my class with a grudge, a recording device, and access to editing equipment. What matters here is that MU officials did backflips to accommodate Andrew freaking Breitbart, whose ethical transgressions on case after case after case are so egregious that Glenn Beck’s website feels compelled to point out his deceptive editing. An administration with the courage of a particularly nervous rabbit would tell him and his minions to take a long walk on a short pier. But, of course, they’re as craven as high school principals.

So: even if Ancel and Giljum did what they were accused of doing, their administration should have backed them up. But, given the source, it would be a reasonable surmise that Breitbart was lying (roughly as reasonable a surmise as that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow). The university, however, investigated them anyway, and dangled at least Mr. Giljum out to dry in the process. Now that’s a violation of academic freedom.

Today’s scoreboard, then:

Number of universities looking stupid: 4

Number of violations of academic freedom: 2

(EDIT: An interesting and provocative piece by Jack Marshall on the Northwestern case in particular, posted within an hour of this one, can be seen here.)

The Kushner Crisis, or "Jeffrey Wiesenfeld Knows So Little about the Way Universities Operate, He Should Be a State Legislator"

I confess that I am not a huge fan of Tony Kushner. While I like Angels in America well enough, for example, I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, and I sure as hell don’t think there’s seven hours of material there. The one time I’ve ever been in the same room with Mr. Kushner, he gave one of the most excruciatingly pompous conference keynote speeches I’ve ever heard. His insularity, profound ignorance of the world inhabited by his audience, and simplistic reasoning were matched only by his arrogance. There were those, a majority, in fact, who lapped it up, of course. (“Ooh, it’s Tony Kushner!!!”) I wasn’t among them.

So, if I were a member of a faculty committee charged with recommending potential honorary degree recipients, I might express some doubts about Mr. Kushner, despite his obvious credentials: two Drama Desk awards, two Tonys, an Emmy, an Olivier, and a Pulitzer, among other accolades. Would I vote against him? Probably not. And I certainly wouldn’t vote against him if my only reason to do so were that he is too critical of a foreign government. Nor if the basis for my reticence were that I read some unflattering things about him on the personal website of… well, frankly, anyone. Nor if I were, say, a trustee, and my function in the process was to issue a pro forma acceptance of the committee’s recommendation unless a). there was a thorough investigation of the allegations against a proposed honoree, and b). those charges were found both credible and relevant.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t be writing this unless someone—in this case the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York—did something remarkably stupid. According to Patrick Healy of the New York Times, trustee Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld “objected to John Jay College’s submission of Mr. Kushner for an honorary degree. Mr. Wiesenfeld described viewpoints and comments, which he ascribed to Mr. Kushner, that he had found on the Web site of Norman Finkelstein, a political scientist and critic of Israel.” Be it noted: Wiesenfeld, a presumed guardian of the standards of a highly respected university seems to have formed an opinion of an internationally famous writer based solely on material found on one personal website, run by someone who truly is anti-Israel and appears to be scrambling to find something akin to support from high-profile personalities, regardless of how far out of context he must place their remarks to get his desired effect. Suddenly, my students who think Wikipedia is a legitimate source don’t look so bad by comparison.

Anyway, Finkelstein reported, in late April and again in early May, 2006, on the (unsuccessful) attempt of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to block Mr. Kushner from receiving an honorary degree from Brandeis University, unquestionably the nation’s most prominent Jewish institution of higher learning.

The ZOA’s allegations include a number of statements attributed to Mr. Kushner, the overwhelming majority of which fall into one of two categories: a). the kind of single-sentence (or less) snippet that screams that it’s being taken out of context, (e.g., describing “American Jews who support Israel as ‘repulsive’”… gee, you think he might have been referring to American Jews who support Israel uncritically?), and b). statements which are utterly innocuous except to a true believer (“Israel is a foreign country. I am no more represented by Israel than I am by Italy,” a comment whose inclusion on the ZOA’s enumeration of the allegedly outrageous suggests that they believe that American Jews ought inherently to owe allegiance to Israel). [Note: the link on Mr. Finkelstein’s page to the ZOA’s statement no longer works, and it is difficult to determine when he is and is not citing their document directly. It may be that it was Finkelstein, not the ZOA, provided that quotation. But since apparently Mr. Wiesenfeld got his information from Finkelstein’s page rather than from the ZOA, the point becomes moot.]

Other alleged atrocities committed by Mr. Kushner include writing a terrible screenplay to “Munich.” Well, I gotta give them that one; it was an awful film (more attributable to heavy-handed directing by Steven Spielberg and a downright awful performance by Eric Bana in the lead than to Kushner, but still…). But, really? Criticizing a movie because some guy from Mossad doesn’t think it’s accurate? Wow.

It is certainly true that the ZOA doesn’t like Mr. Kushner very much: they’re about the only folks out there who don’t think the CUNY trustees made an enormous mistake. ZOA president Morton A. Klein endorsed their action, claiming that the playwright “drips vitriol about [Israel] and its supporters” and sniffing that Israel “is the only country in the Middle East in which he would be free to live openly as a homosexual.” The statement is, in other words, utterly predictable, up to and including a signal that the real problem with Mr. Kushner has more to do with his sexual orientation than with his views on Middle Eastern politics.

Mr. Kushner, in turn, gets more than a little testy, accusing Wiesenfeld of slander, and launching into an extended exegesis of his real political positions, which “do not resemble Mr. Wiesenfeld’s account.” He goes on to articulate what strikes me as a reasonable and nuanced position—the argument of a grown-up, in other words. I don’t agree with everything Mr. Kushner says. And it is conceivable that Wiesenfeld’s characterization of Kushner’s ideology is more accurate than the latter would like to let on… which brings us to the crux of this discussion:

SO FREAKING WHAT???

It doesn’t matter. Or, rather, it shouldn’t. Even if Mr. Kushner were as anti-Israel as Mr. Wiesenfeld claims, that’s irrelevant to whether he ought to get an honorary degree or not. A university, especially a public one, ought to be a site for intellectual pluralism, and there is nothing in Kushner’s statements, even when intentionally taken out of context, that moves him into an ideological fringe. It’s OK to disagree about stuff. Really. Moreover, the function of the trustees isn’t to micromanage university affairs, certainly not at a point in time when an honor has to be rescinded rather than simply not awarded. Are we really going to determine who is and who is not to receive honorary degrees based on the political agenda of a single egomaniacal fatcat?

Because it’s Wiesenfeld’s extremism, not Kushner’s, that’s at play here. He has the absolute right, as an individual, to use his wealth and power to support the ZOA, the state of Israel, and whomever else he likes. But as a trustee of a public university, his obligation is to act in the best interests of the school, not to withhold honors from dramatists who aren’t Jewish enough.

I’ve been following the excellent coverage of George Hunka on this story—both his initial piece and his follow-up. He makes the excellent point that:

It is not a case of censorship or suppression…. It is not a litmus test for the correct view of Israeli-Palestinian relations, or the influence of a specifically pro-Israel bent in some New York institutions (though many will think that it is, missing the forest for the trees). Nor is it an attempt to render Kushner, his work and opinions invisible…. It is, however, indicative of the degree to which wealthy individuals placed in positions of power in higher learning are able to direct the course of an educational institution’s internal academic affairs.

Hunka links to articles suggesting that this isn’t the first time Wiesenfeld has insinuated himself into CUNY’s internal affairs. That doesn’t make him unique, of course. This is a problem we will face as long as universities seek trustees (regents, councilors, whatever) whose principal attribute is wealth. (Ever notice how seldom such people actually know anything about education?) Wealth begets arrogance, and arrogance begets stupidity. Not always, of course, perhaps not even usually, but too often.

The reaction to the CUNY trustees’ failure to, well, hold the university in trust has been swift and significant. There’s a Facebook page and a petition site. At least three previous honorary degree recipients, Barbara Ehrenreich, Ellen Schrecker, and Michael Cunningham, have renounced their own awards in the wake of Kushner’s exclusion. Ben Brantley of the New York Times describes the “extraordinary, active empathy that pervades every one of [Kushner’s] plays,” and professes himself “deeply saddened” by the board’s decision. A scathing New York Times editorial by Peter Catapano invokes CUNY’s less than savory historical record with respect to free speech, and calls attention to former New York mayor Ed Koch’s “irate missive”:

I can’t think of a dumber academic action. What does Kushner receiving an award have to do with criticism of the State of Israel? I am a well-known supporter of that nation. What if I were denied an honorary degree because of my strong support for that state? That would make as much sense as denying Mr. Kushner a degree.

Mr. Wiesenfeld and the trustees who followed his request should immediately reverse their action and urge Mr. Kushner to forgive them. I consider Mr. Wiesenfeld’s action so outrageous as to be an abuse of power on his part requiring his resignation or removal from the Board of Trustees.

In other words, the CUNY trustees generated their own personal tempest by being remarkably bone-headed. Every one of them should be embarrassed, even those who voted for Mr. Kushner but, apparently more concerned with getting out of their meeting on time than with fulfilling their obligations, said nothing to counter Mr. Wiesenfeld’s tirade, and didn’t even bother to delay their vote until his allegations could be considered critically. No, 17 out of 17 CUNY trustees should be ashamed. As Stephen M. Walt aptly writes,

in this case the CUNY board blew it big-time, both because Weisenfeld's accusations were off-base but also because they would not have been grounds for denying Kushner an honorary degree even if they had been true. And meekly caving as they did is contrary to the principles of intellectual freedom that universities are supposed to defend. The end result is that this incident will get a lot more attention than awarding the degree would have garnered (Kushner already has several), and the board's shameful lack of vertebrae has been publicly exposed.

Apparently, now, there is some cause to hope the worst of the damage might be mitigated if not averted. The firestorm of criticism this incident has generated has apparently had an effect. The New York Times’s Winnie Hu reports that Benno C. Schmidt Jr., chairman of the CUNY board, is now getting cold feet. Whether he believes his own rhetoric or not (it’s hard to tell with cowards), Schmidt is now talking about “a mistake of principle, and not merely of policy”; he has called a meeting on Monday of the board’s executive committee, which can reconsider board decisions “detrimental to the university.” It is widely assumed that Mr. Kushner will indeed be offered an honorary degree. Mr. Kushner, meanwhile, also seems to be reconsidering his own petulant response (not wanting the honor even if the board changed its mind). One suspects that on June 3, John Jay’s graduation day, Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Kushner will be joining hands and singing “Kumbaya.”

So nothing will have changed. Nothing, that is, but adding to growing perception that university boards of trustees are populated largely by intellectually and ethically suspect bullies and cowards. Nothing but inflicting lasting damage on one of the nation’s premiere institutions of higher education. Nothing but engendering further suspicion that American universities are centers of intolerance rather than debate. Nothing but fostering a nagging doubt whether decisions made by the rich and powerful have any grounding whatsoever in evidence or ethics. Alas, I fear that all those nothings add up to a something.