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New York Times drops Razib Khan

The New York Times has terminated its contract with one of its new online opinion writers after a Gawker article highlighted the writer's previous association with racist publications, according to that writer's Twitter account.

Razib Khan, a science blogger and a doctoral candidate in genomics and genetics at the University of California, Davis, was one of 20 writers who signed contracts with the Times to write for the paper's online opinion section.

The Times announced its new stable of contributors on Wednesday. Hours later, Gawker's J.K. Trotter reported that Khan had a "history with racist, far-right online publications." Khan wrote 68 posts for Taki's Magazine, a publication founded by a "flamboyantly racist Greek journalist," Trotter wrote. Khan also wrote a letter to VDARE, "a white nationalist website named after the first white child born in America, in which he discussed [an essay] concerning the threat of the United States becoming “more genetically and culturally Mexican.”

On Thursday night, Michael Eisen, a UC Berkeley professor, tweeted that Khan had been kicked off the opinion page. Khan later confirmed that news, telling one follower: "Yeah, told me today. [I] may contribute one-off op-eds in future. I'm chill about it. It wasn't a surprise that [people] went ballistic."

"Sorry bro. But what...happened? I missed the cause of people going ballistic?" the follower, Sajit Gandhi, wrote.

"Google my name and Gawker," Khan wrote. "I really don't want to relive this too much."

Times opinion editor Andrew Rosenthal and Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy did not respond to an immediate request for comment late Thursday night.

UPDATE (Mar. 20, 10:35 a.m.): Murphy emails:

After reviewing the full body of Razib Khan's work, we are no longer comfortable using him as a regular, periodic contributor. We remain open to consideration of submissions from him to our op-Ed pages, both in print and online.