In the Chronicle's blog Innovations, NAS president Peter Wood weighs in on the controversy over the CUNY board's decision not to award Tony Kushner an honorary degree. Kushner has received 15 other such degrees. Peter writes:
Kushner’s views on Israel, far from being a strike against him in garnering honorary degrees, appear to have worked mostly as a condiment. Honoring him at commencement is a kind of PC trifecta: a prominent gay playwright; a writer who embodies a general disdain for traditional American values; and someone who reviles Israel—or who at least appears to, since Kushner now says he is “proudly identified as a Jew” and maintains “a passionate support for the continuous existence of the State of Israel.