Bari Weiss, New York Times Editor Resigns After Being Called “Nazi” And “Racist”

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Bari Weiss in the New York Times newsroom in 2018 (Josefin Dolsten)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Bari Weiss, the Jewish opinion writer and editor who has been a lightning rod for left-wing critics, has resigned from the New York Times.

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The author of a much-discussed recent book on anti-Semitism, Weiss announced her resignation in a blistering letter to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger posted to her website Tuesday morning. She wrote that the newspaper had become a place where “intellectual curiosity — let alone risk-taking — is now a liability” and said she had been subjected to bullying from colleagues who disagreed with the ideas she advanced in her columns and on Twitter.

“They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again,’” she wrote. “Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels. … I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.”

Weiss’s resignation is the latest in a series of changes at the Times’ opinion section that began last month when the paper ran a piece by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, calling for a military response to largely peaceful protests calling for racial justice. The piece elicited unusual resistance from journalists inside the Times’ newsroom and eventually led to the resignation of the Opinion section’s editor, James Bennet, who admitted he had not read the piece prior to publication.

Bennet made a point of bringing in conservative voices, including Weiss and Bret Stephens, whose columns have also been dogged by criticism, and Weiss suggested in her letter that Bennet’s departure had worsened her work situation.

“Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain,” she wrote. “Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.”

Weiss did not indicate what she plans to do next and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Katie Kingsbury, the Times’ acting editorial page editor, said in a statement that she is committed to an intellectually and politically diverse opinion section.

“We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion,” Kingsbury said in a statement issued to NBC News. She added, “I’m personally committed to ensuring that The Times continues to publish voices, experiences and viewpoints from across the political spectrum.”

Since starting as an op-ed staff writer and editor at the Times in 2018, Weiss has risen to prominence for her commentary on issues such as anti-Semitism, Israel, the #MeToo movement and cultural appropriation. Her writing often criticizes what she sees as hypocrisies among progressives, which has earned her both praise and vilification.

Perhaps her most contentious claim deals with what she sees as an effort by young progressives to stifle free speech in what has been described by conservatives as “cancel culture.”

Last month, she wrote on Twitter that the Cotton saga reflected a “civil war inside The New York Times” between what she described as “The Old Guard” subscribing to “civil libertarianism” and “The New Guard … in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.” This week, Weiss was among 150 prominent intellectuals of diverse political orientations to sign a public letter defending the value of open debate and the free exchange of ideas, calling them “the lifeblood of a liberal society.”

In her resignation letter, Weiss said fear of eliciting critical reactions increasingly shape what is published at the Times.

“Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired,” she wrote. “If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.”

She criticized the way a number of articles were handled, several of which related to Jewish themes.

“It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed ‘fell short of our standards.’ We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati,” she wrote.

Weiss has been a persistent critic of progressive spaces that have excluded Jews identifying as Zionists. She has written about accusations that Women’s March organizers did not address anti-Semitism and a Chicago lesbian rally that excluded Jews who carried banners with a Star of David because the event was “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian.”

“What concerns me, and this is sort of what’s behind my piece on the Women’s March or the [Chicago] Dyke March, is a progressivism that forces Jews to check their Jewish or pro-Israel or Zionist identity at the door in order to be good progressives,” Weiss told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2018.

Prior to working at The Times, Weiss wrote for the Wall Street Journal, where she said she experienced similar frustrations. (Before that, she wrote for Tablet, an online Jewish magazine.)

“I was no longer able to write for the op-ed page because I kept getting stonewalled because I was told that my pieces were too critical of Trump and Trump supporters,” she said in 2018.


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13 Comments
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History Buff
History Buff
3 years ago

Sorry she resigned. She should have kept on fighting.

mike
mike
3 years ago

trump is right nytimes is horrible paper and so its people, time to wake up and smell the coffe.

Just ‘sayin
3 years ago

And, so it begins.
They’re cannibalizing Their own,
we’ve all seen this play many times before, and this is just act one

citizen
citizen
3 years ago

this is a great moment for the TRUTH – it’s about time someone stands up against the NY Times – the paper became a SOCIALIST paper with all the news that’s NOT fit to print only to bash the President and all Republicans just to get them out of office. NO TRUE AMERICAN SHOULD READ THIS SOCIALIST PAPER

Maven
Maven
3 years ago

The Frum community shouldn’t cry over her resignation.

She and another wanna be Macher in Boro Park made sure to send around clips how Frum Yidden were Davening in the “Illegal” Minyonim during the virus.

With friends like her……………..

Bye bye Bari!

Tzirel Zlotnick
Tzirel Zlotnick
3 years ago

I used to have the paper delivered, but stopped when I couldn’t take their leftist slant to everything. It can still come in handy though, when you take your dog for a walk. Hamayvin Gavin.

me,myself&i
me,myself&i
3 years ago

What’s happening for a long time at the NYT is such a shame. They are so biased towards the left, that you can see their opinion just by reading the headlines, before you even read the article. Their preoccupation with Women’s rights and Toeivah rights is getting boring, besides being disgusting. The shame is that besides their horrible obvious leftist leanings, they are the only paper which publishes intelligent articles on a variety of subjects. There is no other paper to read that has such extensive, informative and educated content. Unfortunately the educated intelligentsia has been brainwashed to the point of stupidity. The content minus the bias used to be a pleasure to read.

Yankel in crown heights
3 years ago

A courageous woman.

Now, Any one who doesn’t need to wrap smelly fish or have a dirty cat box doesn’t know the true value of NYTimes
This woman has great courage
She needs to work for fox or Trump re election .a former liberal is the best weapon against progressive s

When the natzis, yimach shemam were murdering innocent Jews , FDR refused to meet the rabbis March 1943 by 2 of his closest Jewish advisors, the NYT skipped this and was busy writing human interest stories of the joys of fishing in Maine etc but burying the shoah articles. This is all public. They need to make a movie or website about the perfidy in reportage by NYT. Biased against their own people

I was a democrat until I saw the w
I was a democrat until I saw the w
3 years ago

She was attacked by news people to frightened to admit she’s was a left leaning op ed editor Most have been a shock that her leftest colleagues attacked her for trying to be fair

elyeh
elyeh
3 years ago

If you must have a NY newspaper, buy the NY Post or Wall Street Journal. Do not buy the NY Times. The NY Times is reshoyim and supports sinas Yisrael.

Boroch
Boroch
3 years ago

At one time, NYC enjoyed many more newspapers, including the Herald Tribune, The World Telegram and Sun, The New York Mirror, and a few smaller ones, including the Brooklyn Eagle. In December, 1962, there was a newspaper strike in NYC, which lasted until April, 1963; that long strike, during a very bitterly cold winter, was the beginning of the end of many newspapers in NYC. At that time, The NY Times was the elite of all of the newspapers in NYC. Now, it isn’t even fit to line my garbage!