N.Y. Times opinion editor quits

She claims bullying, criticizes paper for caving to critics

Her critics have accused Weiss of hypocrisy, accusing her of singling out a writer in attempt to get her fired, and have noted her own history as a campus activist who took aim at professors.

New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss resigned from the newspaper this week, the company confirmed Tuesday. In a lengthy note about her Monday departure, Weiss criticized The Times for caving to the whims of critics on Twitter and for not standing up for her after she said she was “bullied” by Times staffers.

“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,” she wrote. “Nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back.”

Weiss came to The Times in 2017 from The Wall Street Journal as part of former opinions editor James Bennet’s vision to show the “many shades of conservatism and many shades of liberalism.”

But she quickly became a lightning rod for both her social-media posts and her published writings, including a large feature on the “intellectual dark web” — a collection of media personalities and thinkers whom she described as “locked out of legacy outlets” — and an essay criticizing college protest movements, in which she cited a hoax Twitter account. She blamed a far-left “mob” for attacking her.

“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” Weiss wrote in her resignation letter.

“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. 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.”

Hours after The Times confirmed Weiss’s departure, writer Andrew Sullivan announced that he was leaving New York Magazine by the end of the week. He, like Weiss, has lamented that the current cultural and political climate stifles open debate.

“I have no beef with my colleagues, many of whom I admire and are friends,” Sullivan tweeted. “The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident.”

He expressed solidarity with Weiss: “The mob bullied and harassed a young woman for thoughtcrimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”

During her tenure at The Times, Weiss attempted to position herself as a reasonable liberal concerned that far-left critiques stifled free speech. She wrote about anti-Semitism and the Women’s March, praised cultural appropriation and warned of the limits of #MeToo in a widely discussed column about Aziz Ansari, which inspired a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

Weiss has long complained about “cancel culture” — she signed an open letter published by Harper’s this month on the subject.

Her critics have accused her of hypocrisy, accusing her of singling out a writer in attempt to get her fired, and have noted her own history as a campus activist who took aim at professors.

In her resignation latter, Weiss wrote “my forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views,” some of whom, she said, had called her “a Nazi and a racist.”

“What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity,” she wrote. “If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.”

Weiss’s letter drew concern from many readers with her claim that some Times colleagues have “openly demeaned” her on the company’s internal Slack messaging platform.

“It’s one thing that many of our readers and staff disagree with bariweiss’ views — fine,” tweeted Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi. “But the fact that she has been openly bullied, not just on social media, but in internal slack channels is not okay.”

In a statement Tuesday, acting editorial page editor Kathleen Kingsbury said, “We appreciate the many contributions that Bari made to Times Opinion.”

A spokesperson for The Times said publisher A.G. Sulzberger does not plan to issue a public response to Weiss’s letter.

Kingsbury assumed the role previously occupied by Bennet, who resigned last month after staffers revolted against the paper for its decision to publish a controversial op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., that argued for military incursion into U.S. cities racked by protests against police violence.

Many staffers argued that it was dangerous to give Cotton’s argument the platform of The Times’s opinion page, and that it would put black people in particular danger. They also noted Cotton included claims debunked by the Times’s own reporting.