The fellowship has attracted 16 scholars and journalists from several mainstream publications to serve as mentors, including The Atlantic, Spectrum News, The Spectator, Ynet, Times of Israel, and two journalists at The New York Times: Jodi Rudoren, the former Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, who now oversees newsletters for the paper, including The Morning and DealBook; and Sharon Otterman, who covers education, health, and religion in the New York City area for the Times and who has closely covered the Palestine solidarity campus protests at Columbia and other universities.

The New York Times handbook of “values and practices” for its journalists states they “should take care to ensure” any public engagements—including giving speeches, participating on panels, teaching classes and presenting at conferences—do not “create an actual or apparent conflict of interest, or undermine public trust in The Times’s independence.”

In response to an inquiry from Drop Site about whether having staffed reporters mentoring for a program whose founder has said it exists to help Israel win an “information war” represented a conflict with the Times’ standards, spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in a statement: “It’s ridiculous to suggest participation as a mentor in this fellowship is anything other than helping to build the reporting skills necessary for the next generation of independent journalists.”

Other fellowship mentors include CNN’s Van Jones, who recently issued an apology after drawing intense criticism for comments he made on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday making light of images of dead Palestinian children and saying they were part of an Iran and Qatar disinformation campaign; and Michael Powell, a staff writer at the Atlantic and a former national reporter at The New York Times, whose recent articles include “The Double Standard in the Human-Rights World,” that criticizes groups like Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders for becoming “stridently critical of Israel.”