The fact that the article was from a site called "Jihadwatch" may give you a hint about their position on the issue. (It may also tell you something about my father, which I'm not tremendously happy about.)

I am sorry. About the first site I turned up when I looked for information online was the Zionist Organization of America, which could certainly not be called unbiased . . .

I called Jehuda Reinharz's office yesterday afternoon, because with all the negative press I had seen surrounding Kushner's honorary degree, I figured some extra positive feedback couldn't hurt. It's my very small way of being politically proactive, I suppose. I didn't wind up talking with Jehuda—which was probably fine, because I never even saw him more than two or three times when I was actually at Brandeis—but I had a very nice conversation with his executive assistant, who pointed out that people tend to be very vocal about issues that bother them and not so much about issues about which they feel fine, so he appreciated that I'd called.

It seems like the same mindset that led to blacklisting of Communists in 1950s Hollywood, though a bit less extreme.

Yeah. I'm taking the assistant's comments to mean that most of the craziness online does not in fact reflect most people's opinions about Tony Kushner and his honorary degree from Brandeis (and the vast majority of people couldn't care less anyway). So hopefully we won't end up in the 1950's again. I have enough trouble already when it feels like the '30's some days.

Unrelated to anything in this post except vaguely the Middle East, hans_the_bold informs me that you know one another from elsewhere online: I learned Akkadian from him. Yay, six degrees of separation.