There will be protests to greet Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as she gives the commencement Address at Boston College.
BOSTON (Reuters) - Plans by a prominent Boston Jesuit school to award U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice an honorary degree are stirring protests by some students and faculty who say her support for the Iraq war contradicts Catholic teaching.
Boston College theology professor David Hollenbach and Kenneth Himes, the department's chair, issued a petition to the school's president objecting to a planned commencement address by Rice on Monday when she will receive the honorary degree -- a custom for commencement speakers.
One faculty member, Steven Almond, resigned in protest.
"We'll be turning our backs during the honorary degree ceremony," said Sasha Westerman, a graduating student at the college who plans to distribute 1,000 protest armbands along with placards reading: "not in our name."
"No one asked me if I wanted (Rice) to speak and no one asked me if I wanted (the country) to go to Iraq," she said.
Meanwhile, Brandeis University, not far down the road from BC, is giving playwright Tony Kushner an honorary degree.
Now Brandeis has elected to give an honorary degree to Tony Kushner, the playwright who wrote the screenplay for the movie Munich. That's the film that shows mass murdering terrorists as sympathetic "humane" heroes with whom the audience can identify. And, as the Autonomist reminds us, Kushner has said "I wish the modern Israel hadn't been born."
Again, I see nothing wrong with Brandeis inviting speakers who express this view. However, that's not what it's doing with Kushner. Instead, it is singling him out for honor. At a minimum, Brandeis seems (as one alumnus put it) to be going out of its way to deny its roots (it will also give an honorary degree to Jordanian prince El Hassan bi Talal).
With Israel as unpopular as it is among liberals and academics, perhaps this is a natural, assimilationist move. But it also strikes me as dishonorable and a betrayal.
UPDATE: Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz attempted to defend honoring Kushner on the theory that it is honoring the quality of Kushner's plays, not his political views. However, Reinharz also said that the school is honoring Kushner in part because his work "addresses Brandeis's commitment to social justice" (that phrase again). In a devastating response, Brandeis alum David Bernstein notes the contradiction and wonders whether the university believes Kushner's anti-Israeli views promote social justice.
So the Secretary of State of an administration that has aggressively fought to end Islamic terrorism, of which Israel has been a prime recipient, is to be protested, and a playwright who sympathizes with those terrorists is to be celebrated? I doubt that students and faculty will be turning their backs on Mr. Kushner as he receives his degree. It is all about "social justice," is it not?
5/20/06 0945: linked to Wizbang COTT LXIX.
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