Gabriel Snyder, the new editor-in-chief of the New Republic, today announced renovations at the magazine with a bold statement about racial diversity:
As we revive one proud legacy of The New Republic—the launching of new voices and experts—those new voices and experts will be diverse in race, gender, and background. As we build our editorial staff, we will reach out to talented journalists who might have previously felt unwelcome at The New Republic. If this publication is to be influential, and not merely survive, it can no longer afford to represent the views of one privileged class, nor appeal solely to a small demographic of political elites.
Snyder announced some of those new contributors Monday on Twitter:
When The New Republic turned into Masada last week, the divide among commentators was: Is this about a digital media baron (Chris Hughes) who doesn’t understand traditional journalism? Or is this about a millennial who was not indoctrinated in Zionism bringing down the curtain on a racist, neoconservative regime? I took the latter position; and there is support for my view today. I also said that the magazine’s purge means the end of the Jewish establishment, a statement Peter Beinart echoes: “the likely end of TNR’s Jewish sensibility may portend the declining influence of Jewish culture in American intellectual life.” Many will read Snyder’s statement about a diverse group as signaling that cultural moment. (Heck, Vietnam did it to the WASP elite; Iraq should have consequences, too…)
Ungar-Sargon wrote a very fair story on Open Hillel for the Forward. Jeet Heer has been very good on the conflict and did some excellent tweets on the New Republic’s racism.
(H/t Catherine Thompson’s report at TPM).
Nice.
Thanks, Phil.
A ruling class, be their pharaohs, grand poobah or elites in democratic capitalistic societies can reign unquestioned as long as it delivers good weather, good crops, victorious wars etc. I thonk that FUBAR in Iraq and Afghanistan is only one of the signals that the Mandate of Heavens reaches expiration date.
I must say it’s funny how, after demolishing old TNR (and rightly so!), Jeet Heer gets picked up by new TNR. I guess that was the job interview–“tell us how much old TNR sucked.” Here’s to TNR doing a 1-80 and becoming arch pro-Palestinian!
“the views of one privileged class, nor appeal solely to a small demographic elites”
I admire them for their subtlety. But now I wonder if they are frank enough to take on the elephant in the foreign policy room.
I’ve read about the so-called Twilight of the WASPs all the time I was growing up, how Vietnam was supposed to have done them in. Well, I look at all the SV companies, the major media companies, Wall St and so on and I ask myself: where is this supposed decline?
Sure, the difference today is that it isn’t 100% WASPy, but it is still overwhelmingly so. Most non-WASPs in positions of power are (Ashkenazi) Jews. Jews of Color don’t exist, apparently.
I’m personally pleased that Batya was hired, someone who can shed light on the Haredim from a perspective that isn’t A) hysterical all the time and B) totally secular.
That being said, I’ve come to view how the rest of America views Zionism as a tandem to how Jews have become integrated into white America. America has long had a tolerance for non-white nationalism(even when one type of non-white nationalism has become violent and intolerant), for the sole reason that as white liberals, they can’t critique those choices.
Well, I think this applied to Jews for a long time, too. I don’t buy the “liberal” Zionist hasbara of “everything went bad after 1967”. People knew what the Zionists had done before then. People were aware, but back in those days, there was a sharp dividing line between Jew and white. That line no longer exists for people under the age of 40, certainly in America.
I think that is something that probably annoyed the Jewish neocons who were fired in the TNR purge. Many of them wanted a Jewish front against the evil WASP Chris Hughes. What they found is that America had moved on, and saw them as a bunch of overprivileged white men who think they have a right to a national position in the commanding heights of the media. A lot of Jewish journalists also treated them as white, rather than Jewish.
And all of that is because America is a lot more diverse than its elites are, and a lot of non-white writers pointed out the TNR’s racism and those white writers simply couldn’t defend themselves that well.