The New York Times’s Andrea Elliot, who won a Pulitzer last year for a series profiling a Brooklyn mosque, turned in a heartbreaking article this morning detailing how a local educator was drummed out of her chance to be the principal of a new New York City public school that offers Arabic classes as a major curriculum component.
The Khalil Gibran School carries on with another—non-Arabic speaking—principal, and Debbie Almontaser, the educator, is engaged in a lawsuit stemming from her forced resignation.
One thing that makes the piece so striking is that it is, at heart, a quiet but mighty piece of press criticism. Before her departure, The New York Post, in a ridiculous story about a supposedly offensive t-shirt, pieced-together a damning quote from Almontaser that ended up sinking her career, while The New York Sun ran an amped up op-ed raising specious doubts about the school.
It’s no secret or surprise that those papers’ fingerprints are all over this disgrace. But it’s still a shame.
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.