Karen Attiah, SIPA ’12, lost her jobs at SIPA and The Washington Post. The journalist says it brought her a ‘sense of grief.’\
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/03/11/karen-attiah-sipa-12-lost-her-jobs-at-sipa-and-the-washington-post-the-journalist-says-it-brought-her-a-sense-of-grief/In the span of just over a year, Karen Attiah, SIPA ’12, lost roles at her alma mater and a company she worked at for 11 years: one, as an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, and the other as a columnist for The Washington Post.
Attiah taught a course on race and journalism at SIPA in spring 2024. But in summer 2024, SIPA did not renew her course for the following spring—the typical timeline for adjunct faculty at SIPA, who are appointed on a semesterly basis—which took her by surprise, she told Spectator in an interview. Just over a year later, after more than a decade of writing and editing for the paper’s Opinions section, The Washington Post fired Attiah, alleging “gross misconduct” for social media posts made in the wake of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s assassination the day prior.
To Attiah—who said she was the only remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at The Washington Post at the time of her firing, and one of three Black women whose spring 2025 courses were not renewed by SIPA—losing these jobs was not just personal, but reflective of greater threats to academic and press freedoms.
