… and, as expected, does after all award an honorary degree to Tony Kushner.
Clyde Haberman, quoting the chair of CUNY’s board of trustees on freedom of speech, asks the crucial question.
If free expression is such a “bedrock” principle, how come it didn’t occur to any of [the trustees] to make that point while Mr. Wiesenfeld was holding forth on Mr. Kushner?
Here’s UD‘s guess on the answer to that question. Her guess is based on absolutely no inside knowledge — just knowledge of Wiesenfeld’s bull-like personality, and knowledge of the way genteel groups of people – like university trustees – tend to behave.
UD suspects Wiesenfeld is a well-established irritant on the board, a person the other trustees dread and try to pretend doesn’t exist. When he suddenly went off on Kushner, the main thing going through the minds of his fellow trustees, let’s say, was How do we neutralize this guy prontoprontoPRONTO?? How do we make him go away? From their point of view, anything was better than challenging Wiesenfeld on this (or any other) matter and having to enter into a conversation with him. So they went along. They gave in.