He said that people should not punish 15 year old for something she said said offhand, when she was 12 years old. How is that causing more harm than good ?
If a class is just not learning from a teacher, both the class and the teacher share some of the blame. But since the teacher's job is to teach, and when the class is made up of children or teens, I always err on the side of accusing the teacher first.
Again, not accusing them of Racism! Just of failing to create the understanding and environment they were supposed to create.
I do think it's relatively clear that something went wrong on that trip. Perhaps he should have been given more support from actual teachers, or perhaps he's just bad with kids and the position was always a terrible fit. But none of that should have significantly impacted his role at the Times, where mentoring teenagers was not a part of the job description.
I'm a programmer. If I offer to fix my friend's sink but end up spilling a lot of water, my friend shouldn't judge me too incapable, but they can still expect an apology for the inundation I caused.
Edit after your own edit: I completely agree. While I don't think he was right not to apologize, I absolutely agree that it is not normal and good that this escalated into him being fired/pressured into quitting. It seems that there was a good deal of internal politics that was involved in the way this escalated (of the personal grudge and/or inconvenient employee kind). We should also remember that we only have one side of the account of what happened at the NYT, what his exact reactions were, how much of what we are discussing here may have been discussed with there as well (and rejected) etc. Still, none of this is painting a nice picture.
These are full-grown adults doing this. Many of them have prestigious jobs in media, universities etc.
Really not hard to imagine a scenario where teenagers are looking for scalps to show how "woke" they are. The author fully admits that he comes off as an asshole sometimes. Maybe he was a bit of a jerk to the kids and pissed them off so they decided tattling on the guy for "being racist" would be payback.
I saw shit like this happen in high school all the time and it was well over a decade ago.
My partner is a teacher and I don't know how many times her students do shit like complain to the principal or guidance counselors that she's being unfair to them. Marking them absent from class for no reason when they attended via zoom and when it's investigated it turns out the kid had the camera off and didn't respond after being called on repeatedly.
Is this actually what happened? I don't know, we only have this guy's side of the story. Literally no one in the NYT or elsewhere has any evidence first hand or otherwise that he said anything worse than what IMO worst case scenario might be described as ill-advised and potentially insensitive.
> IMO worst case scenario might be described as ill-advised and potentially insensitive.
Yes, this is my perception from his account as well. I can imagine that the teenagers he describes may have gotten inflamed, may have felt hostile, and may have complained to parents and trip organizers. They may have easily convinced themselves that it is righteous to take him down when the Daily Beast presented an opportunity to them. They are also likely much worse than a man with a 40 year career in journalism at recalling exactly what happened months ago in long windy conversations, so they are likely to be much more inaccurate in their own memories of these events.
Only someone with limited thinking skills would come away with that message.
I'm not white, nor did I grow up in America, so what the fuck do I know, eh?