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NYU cancels ‘Reporting on the Far Right’ journalism class after two students sign up

by Joe Concha - 05/30/19 3:43 PM ET

New York University has canceled a “Reporting on the Far Right” elective undergraduate class after just two students signed up to take the course.

NYU attracted headlines earlier this year after its decision to hire former New Yorker fact-checker Talia Lavin to teach the class.

{mosads}In June 2018, Lavin resigned from the magazine after making a false accusation against ICE agent Justin Gaertner for sporting what she believed was a Nazi tattoo, which turned out to be a ‘Titan 2’ symbol for former Marine veteran’s platoon while serving in Afghanistan.

“Canceling the class had nothing to do with Talia’s writings, tweets, or anything else. We canceled it because too few students enrolled,” said Adam Penenberg, who serves as NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute director of undergraduate studies, to TheWrap.com.

Lavin took to social media to mock coverage of the course being canceled.

“It was utterly bizarre that me teaching an elective course was ‘national news’ in the first place, and speaks to how much right-wing culture war stories are driven by facile, matador-style politics,” she wrote in a tweet on Thursday.

It was utterly bizarre that me teaching an elective course was “national news” in the first place, and speaks to how much right-wing culture war stories are driven by facile, matador-style politics. https://t.co/EqJKqca0KK

— Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) May 30, 2019

Penenberg told TheWrap the course will not be offered on a future date.

“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.”

Tags Talia Lavin