After his resignation, McNeil published a lengthy response, disputing the high-school students' accusations and criticizing the Times.
[8] McNeil appeared on The Daily to discuss COVID-19 on February 27, 2020, marking him as one of the first to bring widespread attention to the COVID-19 virus in the United States.
[11][10][12] He was the author of two of the fifteen articles about the coronavirus pandemic that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Times.
[17] In 2019 McNeil accompanied a group of high school students on a New York Times sponsored trip to Peru.
[12] The New York Times said they had "disciplined Donald for statements and language that had been inappropriate and inconsistent with our values" after initial complaints in 2019,[12] writing that the Times "found [McNeil] had used bad judgment by repeating a racist slur in the context of a conversation about racist language".
[18][12] In the announcement McNeil apologized, saying that he had been "asked at dinner by a student whether [he] thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur.
"[12] In March 2021, McNeil published an essay on Medium contesting the students' allegations and criticizing the Times' handling of his case.
[19][20][1] Describing his interactions with the high school students on the trip to Peru, McNeil wrote, "I thought I was generally arguing in favor of open-mindedness and tolerance — but it clearly didn't come across that way.