You're still skewing the situation by putting this in the context of someone offending a foreign custom. This is crucial because the locals have unique ability

You're still skewing the situation by putting this in the context of someone offending a foreign custom. This is crucial because the locals have unique ability to say what is and isn't offensive, the foreigner does not. But McNeil isn't a foreigner, and the students aren't locals. If anything, the roles are reversed: the students are supposed to be learning about adult discourse from their interactions with McNeil and other other Times experts. If the foreigner/local dynamic is at play here, McNeil is the local and the kids are the foreigners. If you were at the grocery store with your spouse and pointed to a piece of produce you wanted, and an American teenager chimes in and says "don't point at things, it's offensive to X group." Said teenager isn't a member of X group. You see people repeatedly point at things and nobody takes offense. Do you just take the teen at face value and apologize? Or do you say "X people don't seem to be taking offense to pointing at things. And you're not even a member of X, so I'm not going refrain from pointing at things just because you say it's offensive". To give an apology is to admit wrongdoing and I see nothing wrong in pointing at things in America, hypothetical teenager's objections notwithstanding. Likewise, McNeil did nothing wrong here. The fact that he might have kept his job if he apologized doesn't make this situation reasonable. The fact that people demanded an apology in the first place - for using a word the New York Times uses even in it's own reporting - is what makes this unreasonable. I'm not really disturbed by the reactions of the teenagers - they're still learning and in the process of becoming adults. I am, however, disturbed that a newspaper of record is applying a blatant double standard and terminated a long-time employee for something that the bulk of society and even the Times itself deems inoffensive.