Bari Weiss

Columbians for Academic Freedom

After the 2004 release of the The David Project's film Columbia Unbecoming, which alleged classroom intimidation of pro-Israel students by professors critical of Israel and opposed to Zionism in Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department—allegations the professors denied[14]—Weiss, Aharon Horwitz, Daniella Kahane, and Ariel Beery co-founded Columbians for Academic Freedom (CAF), which led a campaign against these professors.[15] The NYCLU denounced the campaign.[15] Weiss said she had felt intimidated by Professor Joseph Massad during his lectures[16] and thought he spent too much time talking about Zionism and Israel for a course about the entire Middle East.[17]

In response to public pressure after the film's release, Columbia University put together a committee to examine the allegations.[18][19] The committee concluded its work in spring 2005, dismissing most of the allegations against Massad and the other professors, writing in its report that it had "no basis for believing that Professor Massad systematically suppressed dissenting views in his classroom" and that it "found no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-semitic."[20] The committee found it "credible" that Massad was angered by a question in class from a student he understood to be defending Israel's conduct toward Palestinians and that his response "exceeded commonly accepted bounds by conveying that her question merited harsh public criticism", but it also described an environment of incivility, with pro-Israel students disrupting lectures on Middle Eastern studies and heckling professors.[21][22][23] Weiss criticized the committee's focus on individual grievances, maintaining that students were intimidated because of their views.[24] In her 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism, Weiss describes the contentious atmosphere during this period as giving her "a front row seat to leftist anti-Semitism" at the university.[25] Journalist Glenn Greenwald has alleged that the activism Weiss initiated was "designed to ruin the careers of Arab professors by equating their criticisms of Israel with racism, anti-Semitism, and bullying, and its central demand was that those professors (some of whom lacked tenure) be disciplined for their transgressions".[26] In a panel at the 2012 Conference of the American Zionist Movement,[27] Weiss said she "got involved in journalism through activism" in reference to what she called her "Zionist activism" at Columbia.[15][27]

2013–2017: The Wall Street Journal

Weiss was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal from 2013 until April 2017.[31] She left following the departure of deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens, for whom she had worked, and joined him at The New York Times.[32]

2017–2020: The New York Times

In 2017, as part of an effort by The New York Times to broaden the ideological range of its opinion staff after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, opinion editor James Bennet hired Weiss as an op-ed staff editor and writer about culture and politics.[33][34][35] Through her first year at the paper, she wrote opinion pieces advocating for the blending of cultural influences, something derided by what she termed the "strident left" as cultural appropriation.[36] She criticized the organizers of the 2017 Women's March protesting the inauguration of President Trump for their "chilling ideas and associations", singling out several she believed to have made antisemitic or anti-Zionist statements in the past.[37] Her article about the Chicago Dyke March, asserting that intersectionality is a "caste system, in which people are judged according to how much their particular caste has suffered throughout history",[38] was condemned by playwright Eve Ensler for misunderstanding the work of intersectional politics.[39] Others condemned the article as fundamentally misunderstanding intersectionality.[40][41][42]

In January 2018, Babe.net published an anonymous woman's allegation that comedian and actor Aziz Ansari's behavior during a date rose to the level of sexual assault. Weiss published a piece titled "Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader", one of many responses to this incident in the context of the .[43][44][45] In March 2018, Weiss published the column "We're All Fascists Now", in which she argued that members of the left wing were increasingly intolerant of alternate views, presenting varied examples. Shortly after publication, the piece was corrected and an editorial note was placed on it because one of the examples Weiss used was a fake antifa Twitter account. This account had been identified as fake in multiple media outlets in 2017 as a right-wing masquerade aimed at discrediting the left-wing protest movement.[46][47][48] In May 2018, Weiss published "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web". This piece profiled a collection of thinkers who shared an unorthodox approach to their fields and the media landscape. Weiss collectively called them the Intellectual Dark Web, borrowing the term from Thiel Capital managing director Eric Weinstein. Outlets commented on and critiqued the label through 2020.[49][50][51]

On June 7, 2020, the Times editorial page editor, James Bennet, resigned after more than 1,000 staffers signed a letter protesting his publication of an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton saying that since "rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy", soldiers should be sent as backup for the police to end the violence.[33] Bennet later said he had not read the op-ed beforehand. Weiss called the internal controversy an ongoing "civil war" between what she called young "social justice warriors" and what she called older "free speech advocate" staffers.[52][53][54] This characterization was disputed by other journalists and opinion writers at the Times; Taylor Lorenz, a technology reporter who covers internet culture, called it a "willful misrepresentation" that ignored the numerous older staffers who had spoken out, while Jamal Jordan, the Times's digital storytelling editor, criticized Weiss for not listening to her black colleagues and dismissing their concerns as a "woke civil war".[52]

Resignation from The New York Times

Weiss announced her departure from The New York Times on July 14, 2020, publishing a resignation letter on her website criticizing the Times for what she saw as capitulating to criticism on Twitter and for not defending her against alleged bullying by her colleagues.[55] She accused her former employer of "unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge" and "caving to the whims of critics on Twitter".[56] Her resignation from the Times drew considerable news coverage.[56] In her letter, Weiss wrote, "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." She also wrote, "Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times, but Twitter has become its ultimate editor."[57]

Her letter was praised by U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Kelly Loeffler; Donald Trump Jr.; political commentator Ben Shapiro;[58][59] former Democratic presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson; and political commentator Bill Maher.[60][61][62] Conversely, the letter attracted substantial criticism from left-leaning media outlets.[63] Alex Shephard criticized Weiss's letter in The New Republic, calling Weiss's resignation a form of "self-cancellation" and part of a pattern in her work of "taking thin, anecdotal evidence and framing it in grandiose, culture-war terms".[64] Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan called Weiss a "professional rightwing attention seeker" and disputed her claim that social media's influence had led to a hostile media environment for conservatives.[65]

The Financial Times called Weiss a "self-styled free speech martyr".[66] In 2021, Weiss compared her professional travails to those of Galileo Galilei, who was threatened with being burned at the stake unless he renounced his scientific views.[66] On October 27, 2020, Weiss appeared on the talk show The View to discuss cancel culture, which she called "wrong and deeply un-American"; she said, "I believe that no one should be hung or have their reputation destroyed or lose their job because of a mistake or liking a bad tweet."[67][68] Beginning in 2020, Weiss occasionally wrote articles for the German newspaper Die Welt.[69]

2021–present: The Free Press and CBS News

In January 2021, Weiss launched a Substack newsletter titled Common Sense.[70] The name was later changed to The Free Press, which became a media company of the same name.[71] In February, she interviewed Gina Carano about her firing from The Mandalorian.[72][73] On November 8, 2021, Pano Kanelos, formerly the president of St. John's College, announced the creation of the University of Austin in Weiss's newsletter.[74][75][76] In 2023, Weiss publicly criticized and singled out Palestinian professor and poet Refaat Alareer for an internet post[77] in which he ridiculed a debunked claim that a baby was burned in an oven in the October 7 attacks.[78] Alareer subsequently received rape and death threats from some of Weiss's online followers.[77] The IDF later killed Alareer and six members of his family in a targeted airstrike.[79]

In October 2025, Paramount Skydance bought The Free Press for $150 million and installed Weiss, who had no prior experience in broadcast journalism, as editor-in-chief of CBS News.[1][80][81] She reports to David Ellison, the head of Paramount Skydance.[82] This announcement was interpreted by critics as a sign that CBS was shifting rightward in response to the Trump era, and was praised by Trump himself.[83][84][85] This was shortly followed by layoffs, which, one former CBS producer alleged, primarily targeted racial minorities while white employees were simply shifted to other jobs. The total reported losses were around 100 employees, including eight on-air hosts, all of them women.[86]

On December 10, 2025, Weiss appointed CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil as the CBS Evening News anchor effective January 5, 2026.[87] Later that month, Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes segment titled "Inside CECOT", an investigation by journalist Sharyn Alfonsi into the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center.[88] At a meeting the next day with 60 Minutes staff, Alfonsi said Weiss had not contacted her before spiking the story and journalist Scott Pelley charged that Weiss had not attended any of five internal screenings of the story during the final stages of editing.[82] In CNN Business, journalist Brian Stelter wrote that Weiss had "sparked a crisis".[89] The full episode was inadvertently published online in Canada on a streaming platform owned by Global TV, which held Canadian streaming rights to 60 Minutes, and rapidly spread online.[90] It eventually aired largely unchanged, with minor additional context, on January 18, 2026.[91][92]