The New York Times’ Bari Weiss is leaving the newspaper amid an ongoing war between employees, writing a scathing resignation letter in the process.
Weiss, a former writer and editor for the NYT opinion section, confirmed her departure to Vice Tuesday but would not comment further, the publication wrote. Weiss posted her resignation letter, which criticizes the NYT over “unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge” on her website.
“My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views,” Weiss wrote in the letter. “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.’ 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 where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.”
Weiss’s letter, written to NYT publisher A.G. Sulzberger, noted that she does “not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public.” (RELATED: ‘It Far Exceeds Their Standards’: Tom Cotton Criticizes NYT For Apologizing ‘In The Face Of The Woke Mob Of Woke Kids’ Over His Op-Ed)
“But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times,” Weiss wrote. “Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.”
Weiss recently described a war inside The Gray Lady between “(mostly young) wokes” and “(mostly 40+) liberals.” Her description of this inside “civil war” came as public clashes over an op-ed by Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton came to a head. Cotton’s op-ed called for the U.S. military to be potentially deployed in an effort to “restore order” amid nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd.
The New Guard has a different worldview, one articulated best by @JonHaidt and @glukianoff. They call it “safetyism,” in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 4, 2020
The former NYT writer brought up Cotton’s op-ed in her resignation letter, pointing out that “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 also noted that “Twitter is not on the masthead of” the NYT, but said she feels it “has become its ultimate editor.”
“As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space,” according to Weiss. “Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions… What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity.”
Weiss wrote that she still feels that many at the publication don’t agree with views the NYT is pushing, but have been “cowed by those who do.”
“The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people,” according to Weiss. “This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its ‘diversity’; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.”
“America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.”
The NYT did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller.