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Lauren Duca is a journalist, author, former professor and Twitter personality. She’s known for her columns at Teen Vogue, as well as an interview she gave to Tucker Carlson in 2016 in which she called him a “sexist pig.”
Duca has come under fire in recent months for her controversial NYU summer class called “The Feminist Journalist,” and for a BuzzFeed article in which she told the reporter, Scaachi Koul,
“You’re being so f*cking hard on me, Scaachi, and I really, really, really, really would ask you if you would be grilling a man in this same way. It’s amazing. The sh*t that I have endured to continue to sustain a voice where I’m just fighting every inch for the same thing that I think that you want, which is public power and equality, and I’m trying my g*dd*mn best, okay?”
Here’s what you need to know about Lauren Duca:
1. Duca Is a Journalist Who Rose to Fame During Her Time as a Teen Vogue Columnist
Duca’s journalism experience includes lengthy stints at both The Huffington Post and Teen Vogue. It was during her time as a 25-year-old columnist at Teen Vogue that Duca skyrocketed to fame, due to a combination of two primary factors: an article she wrote about how she believed Donald Trump was gaslighting America, and a subsequent interview she gave to Tucker Carlson in which she called him “a sexist pig.”
After that interview (in which Carlson was skewered for apparently sexist and condescending remarks to Duca), Duca tweeted, “.@TuckerCarlson is an enemy of rational discourse. In this fraught moment, his bully tactics are profoundly damaging, and achieve nothing.” Duca has since spoken out about the extensive rape and death threats she received following that television segment.
Duca attended Fordham University as an undergraduate, then received a subsequent Master’s Degree in Journalism at NYU. Prior to her work at Teen Vogue and The Huffington Post, she first worked as a reporting intern at The Norwood News, followed by a role as an online editorial intern at New York Magazine, per her LinkedIn.
2. Duca Was Married to Husband Kris Fleming From 2016-2019; She Has Since Come Out as Bisexual
Duca was married to Kris Fleming from 2016-2019. Upon announcing their divorce, Duca subsequently confirmed that she is queer, and has since made references (both on Twitter and in her BuzzFeed interview) to dating women.
According to a 2017 profile of the couple in The Observer, the couple first met on OKCupid while they were in college, and had their first date at a Russian vodka bar. Fleming said, “We had talked before meeting so it was nice to already have a sense of familiarity, but the connection from meeting in person was something else. I knew I wanted to keep seeing her, even when she told me she was going to Scotland for five months to study abroad!”
Duca said of their first date, “We met at a Russian vodka bar in Hell’s Kitchen for no obvious reason, drank all of the vodka, and then made out on the street like depraved teens for a solid 30 minutes.”
3. Duca Taught an NYU Course Over the Summer; Her Students Have Since Filed a Complaint Against Her
The students who took Lauren Duca’s NYU journalism class filed a complaint against her for showing “a consistent lack of professionalism that persisted throughout every aspect of the course” t.co/bgCsJ4YqCa
Duca taught her first college class over the summer, a course for NYU students called “The Feminist Journalist.”
The original description for the course reads on the NYU site, “Through two reported essays and the establishment of a fully-conceptualized social media presence, the Feminist Journalist will establish the imperative of interconnected motivations in the ideology of feminism and practice of journalism in the totality of the writer’s communication with the world. Our goal will be to create a concrete set of ethics for guiding radical transparency: rather than attempting to pretend the brain is a white board that might be erased, as is the misinterpretation of objectivity, we will aim to share as much as possible, detailing the precise vantage point from which the truth is shared.”
The syllabus, too, caused a Twitter firestorm, with many calling out the 20% of the grade that came from students’ Twitter presence.
Per BuzzFeed, a complaint was jointly filed by the students of her class to NYU about Duca’s handling of the class, following the course itself. The complaint reads in part,
“There was a consistent lack of professionalism that persisted throughout every aspect of the course. We are disappointed at the department and NYU as an institution for hiring a professor without a syllabus and classroom management skills. We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor without a clear course objective.”
4. Duca Has Almost 500,000 Followers on Twitter
Finally figured out how to properly convey my tone in emails
Though Duca is a journalist and author, she is primarily known by many for her larger-than-life Twitter presence.
Duca’s tweeting topics run the gamut, from pithy takes on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court seat to remarks on menstruation. In one such tweet, Duca wrote, “I’m almost impressed that my period is able to come up with fresh material every month. A consistently versatile writer’s room.”
5. Duca’s First Book Comes Out This Month
Duca’s first book, How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics, comes out later in September.
Per BuzzFeed, Duca is at work on her second book, which is about her relationship to God and is tentatively titled God in Retreat.
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