Who is Bari Weiss, the pro-Israeli right-winger trying to reshape the US media landscape?

Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS News, has been dominating news headlines following her alarming decision not to air the network’s investigative report on conditions at El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison.

Decades earlier, Weiss got her start in controversial politics by trying to blacklist Palestinian professors while she was a student at Columbia University in New York. She later founded the University of Austin, an unaccredited "anti-woke" university.

The New Arab looks at her evolution from a right-wing student activist to her role in suppressing news on US involvement in human rights abuses at a Salvadoran prison.

Cracking down on Palestinian professors

Weiss did her undergraduate degree in history at Columbia University in New York, graduating in 2007. There, she co-founded a group called Columbians for Academic Freedom (not to be confused with Columbia Alumni for Academic Freedom or the Columbia Academic Freedom Council).

The purpose of Weiss's group was to investigate Palestinian and other Arab professors whom they deemed too critical of Israel. One of their primary targets was Joseph Massad, a Palestinian from Jordan, whom they alleged had made antisemitic statements and had bullied pro-Israel students for their views.

In response, the university investigated these allegations against Massad and several other professors, concluding their probe by dismissing most of the pro-Israel students' accusations.

The committee found "no basis for believing that Professor Massad systematically suppressed dissenting views in his classroom." Moreover, the committee found the pro-Israel students to be disruptive.

Weiss's 'journalism'

Following her graduation, Weiss began writing opinion pieces for various publications, continuing to denounce Palestinian and other Arab professors. In one of her pieces, she criticised the tenure promotion of Nadia Abu El-Haj at Barnard (Columbia's sister college) for a book she had written on archaeology.

Weiss continued her media career at The Wall Street Journal, where she edited op-eds and book reviews. After conservative columnist Bret Stephens departed for The New York Times, she followed suit. There, she wrote critical pieces on left-wing movements, including the 2017 Women's March, as well as anti-Trump and anti-fascism demonstrations.

During this time, she spoke out in support of academics she believed were brave enough to go against the grain of the traditional intellectual left.

In 2021, Weiss launched a Substack newsletter titled Common Sense, which later became a publication titled The Free Press. As of late December, the articles primarily focus on the Jewish and Christian faiths, the importance of Israeli security, the dangers of Islam, and celebrity cancel culture; the latter is a recurring theme in Weiss's career.

In 2024, The Free Press questioned mainstream news reports about famine in Gaza, pointing to cases of underlying health conditions of children in the Strip, most affected by a lack of nutrition. The site failed to acknowledge that the most physically vulnerable are the first to suffer from famine.

An "anti-woke" university

In 2021, shortly after the founding of the newsletter that would later become The Free Press, the platform was used to announce the establishment of a new "anti-woke" institution of higher education: the University of Austin, Texas (not to be confused with the University of Texas at Austin).

The founders state that the university, which has yet to be accredited, is distinct because it admits students on merit and engages in rigorous academic debates that would not necessarily be possible at traditional institutions of higher education.

Though they claim to be academically independent, most of the founders and benefactors lean heavily to the right politically. Moreover, a high proportion of the administrators and professors have been "cancelled" for different cases of alleged bigotry. Since its recent founding, several of the university's top names have resigned, in some cases over what appears to be the university's own version of cancel culture.

The university president's letter for the 2025-2026 academic year reads, in part, "Our universities have become infected by a harmful lie—that all ideas are equally valid, that truth is merely a social construct, that one culture's wisdom is as good as another's superstition."

The letter doesn't clarify what is meant by "superstition" in relation to another.

The letter goes on to say that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the "best institutions" abandoned scientific reasoning and "struggled to condemn evil" after 7 October. The implication seems to be, based on the political leanings of those running the university, that institutions should not have followed the COVID-19 protocols and that Palestinians are to blame for Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

Appointment to CBS, censorship of CECOT investigation

In October, CBS News announced that it had appointed Weiss as its first-ever editor-in-chief, a clear sign of Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison wanting to take the network in a more politically conservative direction.

Weiss comes to the role with no broadcast experience or a strong background in straight news (as opposed to opinion journalism). What she brings is her online following, including the 1.5 million readers of The Free Press, for an acquisition price of $150 million. Given that the site had been generating around $1.5 million in subscription revenue, the deal seemed more political than financial.

Some have speculated that the appointment of Weiss to lead CBS was due to pressure from US President Donald Trump. He had sued the network and its parent company, Paramount, over an interview last year with then-Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris that many conservatives saw as edited in a favourable light for Harris.

Trump initially sued for $10 billion, then increased it to $20 billion. Paramount then settled with the president for $30 million, $16 million of which he received up front. The decision to settle rather than fight Trump's lawsuit led to an exodus of seasoned leaders at CBS and ultimately created an opening for Weiss.

Days into her tenure, Weiss decided to interview Erika Kirk, the widow of assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. It was somewhat unusual for someone whose role is not on camera. However, it would not be the most controversial decision in her short time at the network.

Last week, CBS, under Weiss, pulled an investigative report into human rights abuses at CECOT (the terrorism confinement centre, or Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo in Spanish).

The Salvadoran mega-prison, built in 2023 and considered the largest of its kind in the Americas, has become a symbol of Trump's third-country deportation campaign in his second term.

The news segment, which can be seen here, notes deportations without due process and shows close-up scenes of Venezuelans, who were deported from the US, being threatened and mistreated at the prison.

Despite being pulled in the US, it was aired in Canada and is widely available online (though there have been successful efforts to remove it from some mainstream online platforms).

Weiss has responded to criticism of her holding the piece, ironically defending her decision by saying that most Americans don't trust the press.

"To win back their trust, we have to work hard. Sometimes that means doing more legwork. Sometimes it means telling unexpected stories. Sometimes it means training our attention on topics that have been overlooked or misconstrued," she said in a statement reported by multiple mainstream news outlets. "And sometimes it means holding a piece about an important subject to make sure it is comprehensive and fair."

Blaming a slow news week, she said, "Such editorial decisions can cause a firestorm, particularly on a slow news week. And the standards for fairness we are holding ourselves to, particularly on contentious subjects, will surely feel controversial to those used to doing things one way. But to fulfil our mission, it's necessary."

Weiss's politics have long been known to those on the far right and the academic left, particularly in Middle East studies. But for many Americans, Weiss's censorship of the CECOT investigation is how they were first introduced to her, an introduction that many of her critics consider long overdue.