I suspect many, but not all of you, are aware of the recent controversy surrounding Tony Kushner’s receipt of an honorary degree from the City University of New York (CUNY). Here’s a brief recap.

My name is Jenn Meeropol; I am Robert’s older daughter and the Grantmaking Coordinator at the Rosenberg Fund for Children. I’m filling in for my dad’s blog this week while he’s on a well-deserved vacation, accompanying my mom on a book tour for her new novel, House Arrest.

Sunday night we learned that Osama bin Laden was dead, assassinated by an elite U.S. military kill squad, although those aren’t the words they use. I certainly won’t mourn Osama bin Laden, but I don’t feel good about his murder. In fact, I’m trying to figure out why it has left me with such a hollow feeling.

Have you ever encountered a situation that you felt was profoundly wrong on so many levels that you despaired at even finding a starting point to explain your revulsion?

In 2009, when President Obama first proposed the “surge” in Afghanistan, I wrote that the left should pose the question: “What’s the carbon footprint of this new Afghan policy?” I felt this presented a golden opportunity to unite anti-war and pro-environmental forces as well as provide mainstream America with a new awareness about our nation’s many military adventures.

In a few days Elli and I will celebrate our 43rd wedding anniversary. I was so young, two weeks shy of my 21st birthday, that I couldn’t get married in the State of Maryland without my parents’ notarized permission. Since then we’ve been involved in a range of public activities, sometimes as individuals, and at others, as a couple. We first collaborated as SDS militants in college. Later Elli, as a member of the Springfield Woman’s Union helped organize Mudpie Childcare Cooperative, and I staffed it one morning a week for four years when our kids were little.