The ghosts of the Shitty Media Men list continue to haunt the industry.
Last week, New York University abruptly canceled a spring class taught by ex-The Paris Review editor Lorin Stein, who resigned from the literary magazine in 2017 after admitting to sexual misconduct. Now, Confider has learned that cultural critic Katie Roiphe was directly responsible for hiring Stein, her former editor at TPR. (Stein also praised Roiphe’s book The Violent Hour in TheParis Review in 2016, calling it “a revelation, at least to me.”)
Roiphe’s role as director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program allows for near-total discretion over the hiring of adjunct faculty members, according to a source familiar with NYU’s hiring process.
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Stein’s presence at the university’s graduate journalism program—he was set to teach a Personal Anthropology course—was first revealed by NYU’s student newspaper the Washington Square News last week. He resigned from The Paris Review in 2017 after an internal investigation found he pursued inappropriate sexual relationships with female writers and interns, a fact he acknowledged in his resignation letter was “an abuse of my position.”
In a now-infamous 2018 essay for Harper’s, Roiphe lamented Stein’s resignation due to his uplifting of female writers at TPR and criticized the “whisper network” of women accusing men of sexual impropriety. (Her piece prompted Moira Donegan, author of the Shitty Media Men list, to reveal her identity.)
Stein’s hiring at NYU has confounded some within the graduate journalism program—though the journalism school’s hiring process for adjuncts is not subject to the hiring committee that would normally review a candidate to join its full-time faculty, according to the source familiar with NYU’s hiring process.
Stein, Roiphe, and NYU did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
