> His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.

That's conjecture, not fact.

When I was at Georgia Tech (THWG), the administration, via the Diversity Task Force, wanted to quietly change the school fight song (better to ask forgiveness than permission). So, the Technique student paper got the story together and published it before the admin could sink it.

I don't know if anyone at the Technique ever suffered for it; my recollection was that the Diversity Task Force, and the Director of Diversity Stephanie Ray, were pretty hostile to anyone and everyone who opposed their re-education ideas, so I presume there was retribution.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090726171257/http://technique....

I'm not even sure what's 'legacy elite' supposed to mean, other than that it is I suppose negative?

Educate yourself. It is a widespread systemic problem often called affirmative action for Whites: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

"Nepobaby" (as in nepotism baby) or simply "Legacy" is more commonly used.

This skips what is supposed to be a meritocracy and can quite straightforwardly be argued to be perpetuating an oligarchy and plutocracy

So yes, it's negative.

Anyway sounds pretty rude to claim that a specific student was admitted thanks to his parents without any evidence.

Thank you for your recommendation regarding the topics I need to educate myself on.

Since it sounds like the other commenters are really confused about why it matters whose kid he is: like if you were just a regular person, you might be ejected from Stanford for pursuing something like this against a far lesser faculty member.

Imagine having first hand evidence of your PI doing fraud, which lots of people do by definition, and that is rightly seen as career suicide. Like even the postdoc in the story, who has the evidence, hasn't come clean! He can't just like, stop living the way this student can.

The students who relayed Marc Hauser's fraud to Harvard never went public with their identities. They don't get to win Polk Awards at all. They're not regarded as investigative journalists. This also prevents us from seeing what happened. I can tell you from my experience at least some of those students joined Hauser's prestigious lab for a medical school recommendation, which obviously didn't happen.

Nevermind research. Think about all the kids at e.g. private schools, younger kids, directly harmed by teachers molesting them, and you know, the kids are the ones who leave, not the teachers, for many decades and many institutions.

So it definitely mattered to be the son of some big deal people in New York.

That said, of all the things to deploy your nepobabiness on, this is a pretty good one, isn't it? Investigative journalism of the finest degree. I don't personally think that a Polk award determines the merit of the investigation; nor does even the publication, clearly. Anyone, everywhere, can be not only be an investigative journalist, but indeed a great investigative journalist. It is a legitimately great story of bringing this guy, who has clearly dodged bullets for a decade, to task.

Ok, so you've established how his parents may be considered elite. You haven't explained the legacy part though. Did his parents get their jobs based on his grandparents merits? Can they trace their lineage back to the Mayflower? If that is irrelevant, can you perhaps explain your conception of "legacy elite" and how it differs from regular elite?

[they] never went public with their identities[..] They're not regarded as investigative journalists

That's true. In order to be considered a journalist you have to go public with your findings. Otherwise, you may be an investigator but not a journalist.

It certainly is fascinating though. Like it will be interesting to see what happens if the kid of Ashton Eaton (gold medalist, decathlon) and Brianne Theisen-Eaton (world champion / bronze medalist, heptathlon) decides to dabble in athletics in 10-15 years.

This is pretty much a journalistic version of that scenario; if there was ever someone born to lay waste to a fraudulent Stanford president, surely it was this kid.

His parents are “elite” and he’s following in their footsteps - hence the “legacy.”

It’s one of the few generational advantages that I’m generally ok with ethically (passing down a trade), so long as it’s not abused.

In this case that advantage seems to be being used for the greater good which is great!

If you measure status by the yardstick "Number of people in the white house you're on a first name basis with" then I am reasonably confident that NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker scores higher than the president of Stanford University.

None of this detracts from what Theo Baker has achieved, of course.

Imagine you're the President of Stanford, and some kid on the student newspaper is bothering you about some decade-old nonsense. You can barely even remember fudging the numbers and besides, everyone was doing it. Student newspapers have been railing against the university since time immemorial, but this guy seems determined to harass you personally. It bothers you and you want it to stop.

You could probably make it stop; almost everyone is guilty of something, and society has seen fit to give you your own police force. And even if you can't find any evidence of pot or drinking or piracy, why shouldn't rules about harassment, bullying and creating a hostile workplace be on your side? Even if that wouldn't hold up in court, probably someone can convince the kid that 'voluntarily' stopping would be in everyone's best interests.

Then you find out the kid's parents both write for major national periodicals. And not occasional contract work or writing the sunday style magazine, they're serious journalists.

You realise this kid has probably already received advice on the lines between journalism and harassment. Probably very well informed advice. And even if his parents don't personally write about rising censorship on college campuses, they undoubtedly know people who do.

You're going to have to do this one by the book.

"Peter Eleftherios Baker (born July 2, 1967) is an American journalist and author. He is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for MSNBC, and was previously a reporter for The Washington Post for 20 years."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Baker_(journalist)

I don't know what he's paid, but I doubt it's anywhere near the median for journalists, for US workers, or for the NYTimes.