Talia Lavin, who resigned from the New Yorker in disgrace last year after helping whip up a Twitter mob claiming a disable Marine veteran was a Nazi, has been hired by NYU’s journalism school to teach a class titled “Reporting on the Far Right.” From the Wrap:
Lavin’s undergraduate course “Reporting on the Far Right” will kick off in the fall semester of 2019 at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. In its official faculty bio, the university billed Lavin as an expert in “far-right extremism and social justice.”
At least one current NYU journalism student questioned the decision to hire Lavin. “I sympathize with Lavin’s politics, but I don’t know why someone who had to quit their journalism job for falsely implying someone is a Nazi should be teaching at NYU,” said the student, who requested anonymity for fear of academic reprisal. “I know there are plenty of reporters out there in need of work who haven’t made a mistake like that.”
Last June, around the time Abolish ICE was becoming a thing, a disabled Marine Corps veteran named Justin Gaertner was highlighted by ICE for his work with the HERO Corps, a group created by ICE to combat child sexual exploitation. But neither the fact that Gaertner was doing good work or the fact that he was a disabled veteran mattered to the mob of social justice warriors who worked themselves into a frenzy over a tattoo on his elbow. This was basically the Covington Catholic story but with a slightly different target. Here’s the photo that got the mob going: