NY Times Opinion adds McMillan as columnist

Author, sociologist and university professor Tressie McMillan Cottom is joining The New York Times as a columnist. She begins in April.

She is an associate professor and senior research fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has also contributed to The Atlantic and was an editorial writer at Medium. She was also a columnist at Slate Magazine.

An excerpt from The New York Times reads:

“Tressie has a signature style for interrogating and exposing the ways that systems, codes and privilege can shape our experiences and interactions with one another, and influence mobility and progress (or lack thereof) in our economy and culture. Her insights and writing are acclaimed from cultural criticism circles to policymakers and pure diehard fans of her essays and podcasts. Among her honors was one of the biggest out there: Tressie was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow in 2020, the recipient of its prestigious “genius grant.”

“Readers will be familiar with Tressie from Times Opinion’s subscriber-only newsletter initiative, and her body of work there shows why we want to bring her important work to an even wider audience. This won’t mean the end of her newsletter, though. We will keep that up and running for when her thoughts, or Tressays as they’re affectionately known by her longtime readers, strike.

“As a columnist, Tressie will bring her trademark insight and reflection, translating the form of the argued essay across all forms of media. She will explore, as she does in every forum she appears, ideas about success, merit, intelligence and opportunity.”