#Teen Vogue editor resigns amid uproar over offensive tweets from college

Alexi McCammond, who was slated to start as top editor of Conde Nast’s Teen Vogue next week, has resigned amid a firestorm of protests over racist and homophobic comments she made on social media during her college days.

The 27-year-old McCammond was seen as a rising star who covered Joe Biden’s presidential campaign last year for Axios. In 2019, the National Association of Black Journalists named her emerging journalist of the year.

But shortly after Conde Nast announced her hiring to helm its flagship teen magazine, deleted tweets from her days at the University of Chicago a decade ago resurfaced. Last weekend, over 20 Teen Vogue staffers circulated a letter to Conde Nast chief content officer Anna Wintour and CEO Roger Lynch registering their dismay.

“My past tweets have overshadowed the work I’ve done to highlight the people and issues that I care about — issues that Teen Vogue has worked tirelessly to share with the world — and so Conde Nast and I have decided to part ways,” McCammond said in a Thursday statement that confirmed her resignation.

Among the tweets, she said after returning from a party as a 17-year-old college freshman that she was Googling to find out how to avoid waking up with “Asian eyes.” In another, she complained about a “stupid Asian” teaching assistant who had only given her a 2 out of 10 on a chemistry quiz. And in another, she complained about being beaten out by an Asian student.

McCammond, who had apologized when she deleted the offensive tweets in 2019, issued longer apologies to the staff last week in a bid to calm the charged political climate surrounding anti-Asian bias.

Conde Nast said it knew about the tweets and that executives were satisfied with her past apologies. In a memo, Conde Nast chief people officer Stan Duncan said McCammond had been “straightforward and transparent” about the posts.

“Given her previous acknowledgement of these posts and her sincere apologies, in addition to her remarkable work in journalism elevating the voices of marginalized communities, we were looking forward to welcoming her into our community,” Duncan wrote.

“In addition, we were hopeful that Alexi would become part of our team to provide perspective and insight that is underrepresented throughout media,” Duncan added.

But the company seriously misjudged the fury that the remarks triggered when they resurfaced on social media, two years after she deleted them and 10 years after she first wrote them. 

The Asian American Journalist Association called on Conde Nast to rescind her job offer. This week, the spa killings in Georgia — in which eight people murdered included six Asian women — kept the topic of anti-Asian violence at the top of the news cycle.

“One in ten of us at Condé Nast in the U.S identify as Asian and, as a company, we stand in solidarity with Asian communities around the globe,” Lynch told staffers in a Wednesday memo. “We reject hate, racism, injustice, bullying and violence of any kind.”

In her tweet announcing her withdrawal, McCammond again apologized. “I should not have tweeted what I did and I have taken full responsibility for that. I look at my work and growth in the years since, and have redoubled my commitment to growing in the years to come as both a person and as a professional.”