The recent hirings of Bari Weiss, Bret Stephens, Michelle Goldberg, and Max Boot are bringing the op-ed pages of our national newspapers a much needed infusion of DIVERSITY!

From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wire service:

How New York Times editor Bari Weiss found herself at the center of the #MeToo debate

By Josefin Dolsten February 2, 2018 10:36am

NEW YORK (JTA) — … Since starting at The Times in May as staff editor and writer on the opinion pages, Weiss, 33, has been at the center of the often difficult discussions of men, women and sexual assault. Her willingness to defy the feminist consensus, both in her own writing and the articles she commissions, has earned her both praise and vilification.

For some, hers is a refreshing voice in The Times’ predominately liberal opinion section. For others, she is a Wall Street Journal transplant who is importing an unearned intolerance of the left. …

It’s a heady perch for a former pro-Israel activist at Columbia University, who after college worked as a freelance reporter and wrote for the Israeli daily Haaretz on a Dorot fellowship, a Jewish leadership program. Weiss’ prior positions include associate book review editor at The Wall Street Journal and senior news and politics editor at Tablet, the online Jewish journal.…

At The Times, Weiss has written pieces on a variety of subjects, including anti-Semitism on the left, cultural appropriation and a humorous take on Tiffany & Co.’s collection of high-end everyday items.

She has also recruited a cadre of high-profile writers for The Times. On her first day there, she shepherded an op-ed written by Monica Lewinsky slamming the late Fox News executive Roger Ailes for creating a toxic and abusive culture at the network. Weiss reached Lewinsky with the help of a rabbi at whose synagogue the former White House intern had spoken.

Weiss also commissioned articles by Julius Krein, a Trump supporter who on the cover of The Times’ Sunday Magazine said he regretted his vote…

Earlier she had commissioned an op-ed by Mayim Bialik in which the actress appeared to suggest that women in Hollywood could avoid harassment if they dressed and acted more demurely. …

Those were apparently the kinds of diverse reactions that The Times was hoping for when it hired Weiss and her fellow Wall Street Journal alum, Bret Stephens. Announcing Stephens’ hire last April, James Bennet, The Times’ editorial page editor, said readers could “expect other additions to our regular roster in coming months as we continue to diversify our lineup and enrich our debate.”

Stephens, who met Weiss when she was a student at Columbia and encouraged her to apply for a fellowship at the Journal, called her columns “both intellectually provocative and morally passionate.”

“I think that Bari provides a kind of common sense sensibility that people find themselves agreeing with even when they don’t have the courage to say so out loud,” Stephens, who earlier in his career edited The Jerusalem Post, told JTA.

Her writing, which includes criticism of the right and the left, doesn’t lend itself easily to labels.

“The thing I admire in other writers and try to stick to myself is really examining things issue by issue,” she said. “That’s largely meant for me that I’m very progressive on a lot of social issues, I’m hawkish on foreign policy. If that makes me a neocon to certain people, if that makes me a progressive to others, OK.” …

Weiss said her last year at the Journal was filled with frustration.

“I was no longer able to write for the op-ed page because I kept getting stonewalled because I was told that my pieces were too critical of Trump and Trump supporters,” she said.

… At Columbia, Weiss made a name for herself as an advocate for Israel.

Besides Weiss and Stephens, the NYT’s main recent hire for its op-ed page has been Michelle Goldberg, who is, of course, completely diverse and not at all like Weiss and Stephens in any possible way.

In other utterly diverse diversity news from the op-ed universe, the Washington Post hired as a columnist Max Boot.