NY Times: After Reversal, Honor Is Likely for Kushner

by Pierre Joris · May 7, 2011

Here, the opening paragraphs of today’s NY Times article on CUNY’s reversal in re Tony Kushner (you can read the full article here):

After Reversal, Honor Is Likely for Kushner

By WINNIE HU

Published: May 6, 2011
Under mounting pressure, the City University of New York board of trustees moved on Friday to reverse its decision earlier this week to withhold an honorary degree from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner because of one trustee’s concerns about Mr. Kushner’s views regarding Israel.

Benno C. Schmidt Jr., chairman of the CUNY board since 2003, said in a statement that he believed the board had “made a mistake of principle, and not merely of policy,” in failing to approve the degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at its meeting on Monday. Mr. Schmidt scheduled a meeting for this coming Monday of the board’s seven-member executive committee, which has the power to reconsider any board decision that is detrimental to the university.

“Freedom of thought and expression is the bedrock of any university worthy of the name,” Mr. Schmidt, a former president of Yale, said in a statement. “But it is not right for the board to consider politics in connection with the award of honorary degrees except in extreme cases not presented by the facts here.”

Related

Outrage on CUNY Vote to Shelve Playwright’s Award (May 6, 2011)

City Room: Reconsidering, CUNY Is Likely to Honor Kushner (May 6, 2011)

City Room: Transcript of CUNY Trustee’s Speech on Kushner Award(May 6, 2011)

ArtsBeat: Theater Talkback: Tony Kushner and the Art of Empathy(May 5, 2011)

Times Topic: Tony Kushner

Related in Opinion

Letters: CUNY and Tony Kushner: A Firestorm (May 7, 2011)

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Tags: CUNY New York Times Tony Kushner

Poo says:

May 7, 2011 at 10:19 am

It is interesting to see the result of public opinion and sober 2nd thought. Nice to see democracy in action. I would be surprised if Kushner accepted it now and in this manner. Time will tell. There seem to be larger issues at work here.

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Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.

In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).

Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.

When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.