Lauren Duca is a Total Fraud: Here’s Why

Over the summer, famed journalist and political commentator Lauren Duca taught a class at NYU titled the Feminist Journalist. The $6,500 course was offered up to any college or high school students that could afford the price tag, and unfortunately, was far from what those attending expected. 

Buzzfeed News recently interviewed Duca and wrote all about the mishaps that came along with the class. Four weeks after the course ended, students came together to file a complaint to NYU about the course. It wrote, “We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor with more interest in promoting her book than teaching a group of students eager to learn.” Scaachi Koul then interviewed the students who had attended and found that Duca’s weak points as a teacher were much worse than self promotion.  

Other complaints included that she was just overall unprofessional, and not in a fun “relatable” manner, just downright inappropriate. They said she didn’t follow the syllabus, told inappropriate stories about her personal life, she would “belittle” students, and targeted one student in particular. Some students called the class, “a master class in Lauren Duca’s personal life.” The students added that she would vanish for 30 to 45 minutes at a time, their work was never looked over, and she would constantly yell at them for not completing the readings. Overall, they said the class was a “waste of six weeks for all of us, and we don’t want anyone else to make this mistake again.” 

And things only get worse as Scaachi reveals Duca in her full toxic, white feminist form. Firstly, Duca caught a lot of heat at the start of her course for the syllabus which her students shared on Twitter. One wrote, “How did Lauren Duca get away with teaching a feminist journalism class without having any feminist text, let alone black feminist test, on her syllabus….?!? I’m lost.” Duca also singled out one student who came to New York for the summer for school. 

Those interviewed by Buzzfeed had said her English “wasn’t perfect” and that “she was very courageous for taking this class.” One student said, “We all clocked it two or three classes in.” They mentioned Duca said this particular student wouldn’t have much to say during class, called her coursework “basic” and “vague,” and that she actually made this student cry during a one-on-one meeting. According to Duca, she was just telling the student that she had to do the work. “It’s frustrating to see as a student, as a young woman, see how somebody can so clearly take advantage of the system and capitalize on her supposed wokeness while not practicing what she’s writing about,” one of the students added.

During the end of the interview, once Scaachi got into the technicalities of her failed NYU course, Duca quite literally lost it. For someone who claims to be a feminist and a journalist, she sure didn’t hold any respect for the journalist interviewing her. “You should put in there that my tone was expressly pissed off and frustrated,” Duca barked. “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 shit that I have endured to continue to sustain a voice where I’m just fighting every inch for the same thing that I think you want, which is public power and equality, and I’m trying my goddamn best, okay?”

She continues, “Congratulations, you thrillingly, thrillingly adept journalist, you have discovered that Lauren Duca is not perfect. Put in the headline, baby.”