The trustees of the City University of New York got it exactly backward this week. They supported the political agenda of an intolerant board member and shunned one of America’s most important playwrights. They should have embraced the artist and tossed out the board member.

Much has been said about the importance of Tony Kushner. It’s true. His play “Angels in America” was a masterpiece that gave voice to the AIDS crisis. There also has been much talk about his precise words about Israel, and whether the trustee who blackballed him, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, got them right. That is all beside the point.

If Mr. Kushner were a lesser artist, it still would have been outrageous for CUNY to deny his honorary degree for political reasons. And the particulars of what Mr. Kushner said are not so important. (His comments were not all that remarkable, though we disagreed with them.) The point is that a public university is supposed to nurture free speech and free thought, not quash them.

The CUNY chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, should have spoken out forcefully on this issue. And Mr. Wiesenfeld, who told The Times’s Jim Dwyer that some Palestinians are not human, should resign.

Mr. Kushner, who is Jewish, described the ousting of Palestinians from their homes in the 1940s as a form of “ethnic cleansing.” He has also said Israel is engaged in the deliberate destruction of Palestinian culture. In a letter to CUNY, he said that he has always supported Israel’s right to exist and that Mr. Wiesenfeld distorted his views.

Benno Schmidt Jr., chairman of the CUNY board of trustees and a former president of Yale, voted to table the award for Mr. Kushner. He declared on Friday that this was a “mistake of principle” and called a meeting for Monday to see if CUNY could do the right thing, too.

It would be appalling if the university failed to do so.