University cancels ‘reporting on far right’ class by disgraced fact-checker due to lack of interest

New York University has canceled an undergraduate journalism class entitled ‘Reporting on the Far Right’ after only two students signed up. The controversial lecturer quit her fact-checking job last year for false reporting.

In a now-deleted course description for Fall 2019, budding reporters were promised to be taught “vital tactics in identifying and tracking the spread of far-right movements online,” and trained in how to “uncover the identities of white supremacist propagandists on the web”  –  which in practice probably meant doxxing 14-year-old meme-makers for telling mean jokes.

Perhaps the students who chose not to sign up did some fact-checking of their own. If they did, they would have learned that the lecturer, Talia Lavin, resigned from the New Yorker last year after she falsely accused a disabled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent of rocking a Nazi tattoo. So much for “identifying and tracking” the extreme right!

Since then, Lavin has continued to push for online censorship, retweet Antifa content, and call the parents of foul-mouthed teenage YouTube stars Nazis. She also did a stint as an “extremism researcher” for Media Matters for America, a left-wing group that runs hit-pieces on conservative news outlets.

Lavin’s bio that described her as an expert in “far-right extremism and social justice,” has been scrubbed from NYU’s website. Adam Penenberg, director of undergraduate journalism studies at NYU, told The Wrap that “it would make no sense” to offer the course again, given the low interest.

Students hungry for some social-justice infused reporting need not fear, though. NYU currently offers journalism courses ‘Minorities in the Media,’ ‘Investigating Injustice,’ and ‘Writing Social Justice.’ Would-be reporters seeking a woke fix can also sign up for ‘Writing About Immigration,’ taught by author and activist Suketu Mehta, whose latest book makes a “timely argument for why the United States and the West would benefit from accepting more immigrants.”

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