CONTACT: Sarah-Leah Thompson
[email protected]
Director of Communications
Endowment for Middle East Truth
(202) 601-7422
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EMET EXPRESSES ITS SUPPORT FOR BARI WEISS AND HER EXPOSURE OF THE POLITICALLY BIASED AND ANTI-SEMITIC WORK ENVIRONMENT AT THE NEW YORK TIMES
(Washington, D.C., July 14, 2020) The Endowment for Middle East Truth applauds Bari Weiss, former opinion editor and writer of the New York Times, for her intellectual integrity and moral courage. Weiss published a letter stating her resignation from the New York Times, citing “unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge,” among her reasons for leaving. Identifying as a centrist, Weiss describes being bullied and stifled by her colleagues in her attempts to uphold Adolph Ochs’ vision “to make of the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”
In a time when anti-Semitism is becoming increasingly mainstream, it is devastating and alarming, but not surprising, to see a Jewish writer discriminated against and called a Nazi and a racist, and chastised for “writing about the Jews again.” It is especially concerning that this injustice comes from a well-known newspaper that prides itself on pluralism and diversity. An alumnus of Columbia University, Weiss has previously experienced virulent anti-Semitism and intimidation as a result of expressing pro-Israel sentiments in a supposedly educational and intellectual environment. Weiss cites her time at Columbia in her 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism, as a “front row seat to leftist anti-Semitism.”
In addition to illustrating the hostile environment in which Weiss worked at the New York Times, she goes on to describe the rigid orthodoxy of the so-called enlightened classes of the politically correct. Weiss eloquently captures the degradation of morality within the New York Times saying that “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.”
EMET prides itself on challenging falsehoods and telling the truth - the EMET - and therefore stands with Bari Weiss and her sense of moral obligation to denounce narrow narratives.
Says EMET Founder and President, Sarah Stern, “EMET is proud to offer our strongest words of solidarity and support for Bari Weiss, who is a true model of intellectual integrity and moral courage. One can only imagine the extraordinarily difficult experiences she had to endure in these dark days of “group think” at the New York Times when as she so eloquently put it, “Twitter has become its ultimate editor.” One hopes that one day the “Grey Lady” will return to the founding principles of Adolph Ochs, but until that day arrives, we at EMET can only say, “Bravo, Bari. Bravo.”
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Founded in 2005, The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) is a Washington, D.C. based think tank and policy center with an unabashedly pro-America and pro-Israel stance. EMET (which means truth in Hebrew) prides itself on challenging the falsehoods and misrepresentations that abound in U.S. Middle East policy.
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