NYU Cancels Former New Yorker Fact-Checker Talia Lavin’s Journalism Class

New York University has canceled an undergraduate journalism class that former New Yorker fact-checker Talia Lavin was scheduled to teach this fall after only two students signed up.

The decision to hire Lavin to teach the elective, “Reporting on the Far Right,” had drawn criticism since she resigned her New Yorker position last June after falsely accusing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo.

Adam Penenberg, director of undergraduate studies at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, said that low enrollment forced him to cancel the class. “Canceling the class had nothing to do with Talia’s writings, tweets, or anything else. We cancelled it because too few students enrolled,” Penenberg added.

Lavin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

NYU journalism electives are capped at 15 students, though the department has run courses with as few as eight students under certain circumstances.

Penenberg also said it was unlikely his department would invite Lavin back. “It would make no sense to try it again, given how few students expressed interest,” he said. “We have no plans to offer Talia another course, simply because her main focus (and the focus of her upcoming book) is the far right.”

Lavin’s official NYU faculty bio — which lauded her as an expert in “far-right extremism and social justice” — was removed sometime around April 20, 2019, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

White House exposes ‘Transshipment Scam’ costing US up to $26B, points finger at China

Live bullet found aboard United flight forces passengers off plane for security sweep at Denver airport

Woke Colorado School District Teaches 5-Year-Olds Sexual Anatomy Using Images So Bad We Refuse to Post Them – By Age 7, It Gets Far Worse

Marco Rubio gets 68 new jobs in epic White House birthday gift inspired by viral meme

Watch: Bystander Appears to Capture New B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber Flying Low Over Wichita

HHS warns Texas hospitals against denying life-saving care to newborn with disability

Legal Expert: Don Lemon’s Legal Battle Could Have Devastating Unintended Consequences for Abortion Clinics

Watch: NBC Broadcasts Dead Air – Twice – As Literally Speechless Election Analyst Learns Results Are Missing from 5 of 9 USB Drives in Blue City

Mamdani’s luxury-home tax gets new life as appeals court lifts roadblock in homeowner fight

Fox News Poll: A Senate battle looms in Michigan

A Democratic senator wanted to ban super PACs in primaries. Now he’s benefiting from one

Steve Hilton gains ground in California governor’s race but Becerra maintains lead: Poll

State Department abolishes ‘ideologically extreme and discriminatory’ DEI policies in Foreign Service

Zelensky’s missile plea shows dire state of Ukraine’s war machine

Blanche praises career DOJ staff and vows to leave agency better ‘than when I found it’

In her original course, Lavin promised a fulsome exploration of the “far right,” saying she would show students how to track and identify online extremism.

“In an era when hate is on the rise, this course will provide student journalists with a thorough grounding in far-right and white-supremacist movements in the United States, briefly examining their history and delving into their sprawling present incarnations,” reads a now deleted course description, which also promised “a careful analysis of pieces that have fallen short of the mark.”

Lavin’s three-year career as a fact checker at The New Yorker was derailed last June after she tweeted an accusation that Justin Gaertner, a wheelchair-bound ICE agent, of sporting a Nazi Iron Cross tattoo over his left elbow. She later deleted the tweet and apologized after learning the tattoo represented a Maltese Cross, a symbol commonly used by members of the U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Though the original misleading tweet was only up for a short time, Lavin earned a public rebuke from both ICE and her employer that led to her voluntary resignation.