While I don't think the NYT had a strong reason to reveal Scott's real name, it's absurd to say that newspapers shouldn't "reveal someone's real identity against that person's wishes" in the general case.
As the saying goes, journalism means printing things that certain people don't want published, and everything else is PR. Journalists are supposed to reveal things against the subject's wishes.
IANAL, but my understanding is that it's extremely difficult to successfully sue someone for libel in the US, mainly due to all the First Amendment issues that come with letting the courts adjudicate what can and can't be said.
Professionally-trained journalists are very aware of libel concerns and are taught to stay within the law. The NYT's journalistic standards may have taken a nosedive in recent years but I'm sure they can still afford good enough lawyers to avoid getting sued over a hit piece, even one as sloppy as this.
Much of this behavior becomes a lot easier to understand when you realise that "wokeism" is a religion. I don't mean that ironically. John McWhorter is currently serialising a book on this topic on his own Substack, and he's far from the only person to make the observation.
I'm stealing this point from Twitter, but Africa is the most diverse continent on Earth - culturally, linguistically, even genetically. There are 250 ethnic groups within Nigeria alone, most of which have little in the way of shared language or culture, and had even less before colonists drew a circle around them and insisted they were a single nation. How on Earth does it make sense to say that all black people have a shared culture, especially if you simultaneously insist that white people don't?
You may find this philosophy bizarre, and I agree, but it's important to understand that it doesn't come from nowhere; it's been brewing in academia for decades and is spreading into the mainstream at alarming speed. I highly recommend learning more about "critical race theory" if you want to understand why what many now call "neoracism" is gaining so much traction within our elite institutions.
> I'm skeptical it's an actual takeover per se, and not the older generation being completely blindsided by the force with which the younger generation(s) release their demands.
This. The change is coming from the bottom up, and internal reports from the NYT and elsewhere usually suggest that when there's another "woke" controversy it's generally the young being pitted against the old.
There's been an enormous cultural shift at our elite colleges in the last five to ten years, and the inquisitors of the new religion have by now had several years to graduate and enter the institutions. This trend is going to continue - we're only just getting started.
So if I'm understanding correctly, Dershowitz asked Pinker for a linguistic opinion vis a vis laws against sex with underage girls, and Pinker wasn't the least bit curious over what this was all about?
