Anyone who’s heard of far-right editor Bari Weiss would know how she has been the subject of trenchant criticisms over the years. The former New York Times op-editor has been subjected to public vitriol over the years for her comments and views that are deemed highly controversial and bigoted.
Weiss was born on March 25, 1984, in Pennsylvania. She graduated from Columbia University and thereafter engaged and worked as an op-ed in a variety of publications. She worked at the Wall Street Journal as an op-ed and book review editor from 2013 to 2017. She went on to work at the New York Times as a culture and politics op-ed writer till 2020.
Her resignation caused a lot of discussions and uproars amongst her defender, after she pointed out that it was a lack of tolerance towards her opinion which prompted her departure. This is considered one of the “biggest media stories in years.”
After Weiss wrote 1500 words on her personal website on why she had chosen to leave her role as an editor, she repeatedly mentioned harassment by co-workers and constant bullying as the key causes. This isn’t the only time that Weiss has made a headline.
She’s been considered the most notorious opinion journalist due to her outrageous opinions on woke and progressive culture. In 2021, she wrote a piece on Commentary on how woke culture and the pioneers of ideology are using violent means to acquire their goals. They said:
“A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears.”
Adding to this, she said:
“In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan, your whole life can be ruined. Just ask Tiffany Riley, a Vermont school principal who was fired—fired—because she said she supports black lives but not the organization Black Lives Matter.”
In addition to her anti-work comments, which ushered in a lot of criticism, her pro-Israel stance at the expense of the rights of Arab people also received loads of backlash. Glenn Greenwald wrote in detail on this subject in The Intercept, where he said:
“After the New York times last April hired Bari Weiss to write for and edit its op-ed page, I wrote a long article detailing her history of pro-Israel activism and, especially, her involvement in numerous campaigns to vilify and ruin the careers of several Arab and Muslim professors due to their criticisms of Israel. I chose to profile Weiss’s history because (a) the simultaneous hiring of Bret Stephens generated so much controversy that Weiss’s hiring was ignored, even though it was clear her hiring would be more influential since she would be not just writing but also commissioning articles for that highly influential op-ed page; (b) the NYT was justifying these hires on the grounds of “diversity,” even though hiring hardcore, pro-Israel activists for that page (which has no Muslim columnists) was the literal opposite of diversity; and, most of all, (c) Weiss was masquerading as an opponent of viewpoint intolerance on college campuses even though her entire career had been built on trying to suppress, stigmatize, and punish academic criticisms of Israel.”
It seems like Weiss continues to be criticized for her opinions and we’re sure she will keep making more headlines in the foreseeable future.