[5][6] After high school, Weiss went to Israel on a Nativ gap year program, helping build a medical clinic for Bedouins in the Negev desert and studying at a feminist yeshiva and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
After the 2004 release of the film Columbia Unbecoming, which alleged classroom intimidation of pro-Israel students by pro-Palestinian professors, she, Aharon Horwitz, Daniella Kahane, and Ariel Beery co-founded Columbians for Academic Freedom (CAF).
Weiss said she had felt intimidated by Professor Joseph Massad during his lectures[14] and thought he spent too much time talking about Zionism and Israel for a course about the entire Middle East.
[6] In Haaretz, she criticized the tenure promotion of Barnard College anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj[22] over a book that Weiss alleged caricatured Israeli archaeologists.
[29] She criticized the organizers of the 2017 Women's March protesting the inauguration of President Trump for their "chilling ideas and associations", singling out several she believed to have made antisemitic or anti-Zionist statements in the past.
[33][34][35] In January 2018, Babe.net published an anonymous woman's allegation that comedian and actor Aziz Ansari's behavior during a date rose to the level of sexual assault.
[36][37][38] Weiss was one of several writers, including Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic, who argued that the woman who wrote the piece ignored her own agency, not considering her own ability to speak up and leave the situation.
[40]) In March 2018, Weiss published the column "We're All Fascists Now", in which she argued that members of the left wing are increasingly intolerant of alternate views, presenting varied examples.
Weiss collectively described them as the Intellectual Dark Web, borrowing the term from Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital.
[44][45][46] On June 7, 2020, the Times editorial page editor, James Bennet, resigned after more than 1,000 staffers signed a letter protesting his publication of an op-ed[26] by U.S.
Senator Tom Cotton saying that since "rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy," soldiers should be sent as backup for the police to end the violence.
[47][48][49] This characterization was disputed by other journalists and opinion writers at the Times; Taylor Lorenz, a technology reporter who covers internet culture, called it a "willful misrepresentation" that ignored the numerous older staffers who had spoken out, while Jamal Jordan, the Times's digital storytelling editor, criticized Weiss for not listening to her black colleagues and dismissing their concerns as a "woke civil war".
[2] In her letter, Weiss wrote, "Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions."
[60] In 2021, Weiss compared her professional travails to those of Galileo Galilei, who was threatened with being burnt at the stake if he did not renounce his scientific views.
[60] On October 27, 2020, Weiss appeared on the American talk show The View to discuss cancel culture, which she called "wrong and deeply un-American"; she said, "I believe that no one should be hung or have their reputation destroyed or lose their job because of a mistake or liking a bad tweet.
[75] After backlash in the press, Weiss conceded that her sound bite was glib and simplistic, and said instead that Kavanaugh's "rage-filled behavior" before the Senate Judiciary Committee should have disqualified him.
After the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, Weiss was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher in early November 2018.