Claire Malone

And then I think she would argue that her her substack, the Free Press, has had, you know, reported investigations that while sort of maybe more ideologically slanted that there's there's been reporting and she's been an editor for a long time.

She's from a particular neighborhood in Pittsburgh called Squirrel Hill.

It has a large Jewish population.

And, you know, Barry Weiss comes from a family where she spent a lot of time in Israel, feels a deep connection.

And she comes to Columbia after doing a gap year in Israel.

She goes to a screening of a documentary that has been made by a Boston-based activist group called The David Project.

And it's called Columbia Unbecoming.

And it basically is a brief documentary that's interviewing students, Jewish students at Columbia, who feel that professors in basically the Middle Eastern Studies Department have intimidated them because of their background.

views that are supportive of Israel.

And, you know, there are some back and students basically testifying about their experiences with the professors.

And Barry is very sort of moved to action by this documentary.

She comes up at the end of the meeting and says to the guy organizing things, how can I help out?

And she starts writing op-eds and becomes pretty quickly, particularly if you sort of

know or become familiar with Barry Weiss.

She's sort of this energetic force of nature.

She's soon writing op-eds.

And I think probably because this controversy with the Middle East Studies Department because it was New York City, because it was a hot topic, it really got picked up by

mainstream media, the New York Times, the New York Sun were covering it.

And I think through that, Barry just really gets connected to not just kind of, you know, media appearances, but a wider networking world.

She's a really good networker.