Shocking but not surprising

Much-honored playwright Tony Kushner was set to receive one more honor–a degree from John Jay College–but it was suddenly taken away from him on an 11-1 vote of the trustees of the City University of New York. This was the first rejection of an honorary degree nomination since 1961.

The news article focuses on one trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, an investment adviser and onetime political aide, who opposed Kushner’s honorary degree, but to me the relevant point is that the committee as a whole voted 11-1 to ding him.

Kusnher said, “I’m sickened,” he added, “that this is happening in New York City. Shocked, really.” I can see why he’s shocked, but perhaps it’s not so surprising that it’s happening in NYC. Recall the famous incident from 1940 in which Bertrand Russell was invited and then uninvited to teach at City College. The problem that time was Russell’s views on free love (as they called it back then). There seems to be a long tradition of city college officials being willing to risk controversy to make a political point.

P.S. I was trying to imagine what these 11 trustees could’ve been thinking . . . my guess is it was some sort of group-dynamics thing. They started talking about it and convinced each other that the best thing to do would be to set Kushner’s nomination aside. I bet if they’d had to decide separately most of them wouldn’t have come to this conclusion. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, five minutes after walking away from that meeting, most of those board members suddenly thought, Uh oh–we screwed up on this one! As cognitive psychologists have found, this is one of the problems with small-group deliberation: a group of people can be led to a decision which is not anywhere near the center of their positions considered separately.

3 thoughts on “Shocking but not surprising

  1. "As cognitive psychologists have found, this is one of the problems with small-group deliberation: a group of people can be led to a decision which is not anywhere near the center of their positions considered separately.". Actually, it been found that groups can come to (bayesian) optimal group decisions if they're near equal in 'competence' (www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5995/1081.abstract). Perhaps the trustees were very unequal, and the most confident of them was able to force his 'negative' opinion through.
    (Thank you for a generally wonderful blog)

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