Alluding to the controversy, Mr. Kushner said the honorary doctorate would remain “the most interesting one I had to work hardest to get,” and he praised the forces that led to his receiving it.
“Behind it there stands a shining community of people, of spirits of whom I’m proud to be able to call myself kindred,” he said, “who believe in the necessity of honest exchanges of ideas and opinions, who understand that life is a struggle to synthesize, to find a balance between responsibility and freedom, strategy and truth, survival and ethical humanity.”
The CUNY board of trustees voted last month to deny the degree at the urging of a trustee, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, who denounced Mr. Kushner’s views on Israel and branded him “a Jewish anti-Semite.”
The playwright has said that while he has been critical of Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza, he unconditionally supports Israel’s right to exist.
Amid an onslaught of criticism, CUNY reversed the decision.
On Friday, Mr. Kushner, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his play “Angels in America,” told new graduates of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice that they, too, must engage with society’s thorniest issues. He urged them to “find the human in yourself by finding the citizen in yourself, the activist, the hero in yourself.”
Saying they faced a “beset and besieged world” where slavery masquerades as freedom, Mr. Kushner urged them to respond to the planet’s cries for help.
“There’s injustice everywhere,” he said. “There’s artificial scarcity everywhere. There’s desperate human need, poverty and untreated illness and exploitation everywhere. Everywhere in the world is in need of repair, so fix it. Solve these things.”
Outside the graduation ceremonies, a small group of protesters denounced Mr. Kushner’s selection as a speaker in a public university.
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