Laura Ingraham offered fire and fury on her Fox News show “The Ingraham Angle” on Thursday, blasting a decision by NYU to hire liberal Twitter writers Talia Lavin and Lauren Duca to teach journalism courses during the Fall 2019 semester.
“They want to circumscribe speech. They want to take players off the field altogether. So she’s just a hit gal. She’s another Media Matters, they don’t want to argue. They don’t want to win the debate. They want to search and destroy. That’s what they do,” Ingraham said during an interview with conservative author Dinesh D’Souza.
“That’s why Fox viewers are so loyal to this network because we refuse to bow. We refuse to cave in to these kind of terroristic tactics and that’s what they are. They’re little journo terrorists,” she added.
D’Souza singled out Lavin in particular, saying her appointment to teach about the far right following her resignation from the New Yorker after falsely accusing a disabled ICE agent of wearing a Nazi tattoo was beyond the pale.
“She’s kicked out of journalism, but she’s hired to teach journalism,” he said in disbelief. “Think about this. In any other field this would be insane. If somebody was caught, for example, cheating at chess or making illegal moves, would they be hired to teach chess, to be a chess coach?”
Reps for NYU have not responded to repeated requests for comment from TheWrap over the issue. In a statement to TheWrap Duca said she remained undaunted.
“This ‘radical partisan’ openly believes the guiding aim of democracy is building a more equitable society, and that journalism must provide intersectional perspectives in empowering the public with the foundation of information that project requires,” she said in response to the segment. “I suppose it only makes sense that state TV sees me as the antichrist.”
Lavin declined to comment, but she too laced into Ingraham on Twitter.
“Here’s Laura Ingraham displaying my face to 2.5 million viewers and calling me a “little journo-terrorist.” I am 29. I have no full-time job. I am teaching a single course, for $7k, as an adjunct,” she said. “This is insane. And irresponsible. It is incitement. It is not okay.”