An hour ago, a letter was emailed to CUNY's Board of Trustees. The letter, below, defends trustee Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld and his point of view. This letter will be hand-delivered to every trustee later today. The initiators of this letter have chosen not to release the names of the signatories to the public; the likelihood of hate mail and death threats are too great to risk at this time.

As I knew, the heroic Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld is now being defamed and attacked while the playwright Tony Kushner is being defended and supported.

Kushner is the man who believes that the state of Israel was a "mistake." He is quoted as having said: "I have a problem with the idea of a Jewish state. It would have been better if it never happened." He has also accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing."

Like other members of the left intelligentsia—who almost totally control academia and thus influence media, government, and the international "discourse," Kushner is not viewed as having engaged in "hate speech" or in "racist" speech. Kushner's support for a Palestinian "state," which is a code-word for the destruction of the Jewish state, is viewed as both his academic and "free speech" right and as the revered and only opinion to hold. No other view is allowed, even though this view is based on a series of lies, misinformation, disinformation, and anti-Semitism.

Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld defended Israel's right to exist by speaking the truth about Israel, and for characterizing Kushner's views accurately–for which he is now being demonized.

This entire episode proves how craven and conformist the western academy is, how it supports terrorism and Islamic gender and religious apartheid over the only modern, western-style democracy in the Middle East: The Jewish state. Okay, fine. But this group also wishes to be seen as a champion of liberty and tolerance for its very support of totalitarian misogyny—which is not so fine.

Here is the text of the letter the trustees have just received: