Outrage in the Nikole Hannah Jones Tenure Controversy

By Cash Michaels –

If anyone is concerned about how Nicole Hannah-Jones is doing amid the growing controversy over how she’s been treated by UNC-Chapel Hill, she says don’t be.

After being hired for a heralded position at the university’s renowned journalism school, the award-winning New York Times investigative journalist was denied tenure by the board of trustees—despite the support of the school’s faculty and administration.

“I have been overwhelmed by all of the support you all have shown me,” Hannah-Jones tweeted under her alias “Ida Bae Wells” May 20th. “It has truly fortified my spirit and my resolve. You all know that I will [be] OK. But this fight is bigger than me, and I will try my best not to let you down.”

That feisty, defiant, intellectual spirit is what the recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant is known for. For two years she has been targeted by political conservatives and contrarian historians for her Pultizer Prize-winning New York Times Magazine series, “The 1619 Project.” The deeply researched series describes the centrality of slavery to the founding of what would eventually become the United States of America over 400 years ago, when people of African descent were first brought to these shores.

The narrative profoundly contradicts the more popular adage that the nation was formally founded in 1776, when colonists declared their independence from England in search of freedom, thus downplaying slavery as the institution through which colonists had built the powerful economy that enabled them to break away from their motherland.

But maintaining the 1776 narrative has proven to be the main mission of many Republicans, like former President Donald Trump, US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), and NC Sen. Thom Tillis. They and others have vehemently opposed Hannah-Jones, accusing her of “Marxist” anti-American rhetoric, and chiding the Times for giving her the prime platform with which to disseminate it, especially to American students.

“Americans do not want their tax dollars diverted from promoting the principles that unite our nation towards promoting radical ideologies meant to divide us,” Tillis wrote to a constituent in a May 21st letter.

And there lies what’s at the heart of the UNC-vs.-Hannah-Jones tenure controversy, observers say.

As first reported by NC Policy Watch several weeks ago, Hannah-Jones was hired by the university’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media (from which Hannah-Jones earned her master’s degree in 2003) to be the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. Her journalistic bona fides, by all accounts, exceeded the requirements.

Hannah-Jones reported for the Raleigh News and Observer for several years before going to The Oregonian in Portland, and then to Pro Publica in New York. Her reporting gained prime notice, and applause, at the Times Magazine, where she focused on social justice issues before overseeing “The 1619 Project.”

When Hannah-Jones was hired by UNC’s Hussman School, Dean Susan King said in April, “Giving back is part of Nikole’s DNA, and now one of the most respected investigative journalists in America will be working with our students on projects that will move their careers forward and ignite critically important conversations.”

But conservatives close to the UNC Board of Trustees reportedly weren’t having it, especially when tenure, as approved by the faculty tenure committee and normally rubber-stamped by the Board of Trustees, was part of the hiring package for Hannah-Jones. Shortly after it was announced that the journalist was coming to UNC-Chapel, pressure was brought to bear on the Hussman School to eliminate the tenure offer—a lifetime appointment—changing it to a five-year contract with the possibility of tenure at the end.

Shannon Watkins of the conservative James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (formerly the Pope Center) called Hannah-Jones an “activist-scholar.”

The two previous Knight Chairs, sponsored by the Knight Foundation of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, have been hired with tenure. The fact that Hannah-Jones was an outspoken black female professional did not escape anyone in how she was being treated, and the reaction from UNC faculty, students, and colleagues was strong and immediate.

“As Hussman School of Journalism and Media faculty, we are stunned at the failure to award tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize, Peabody, and MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” winner and UNC-Chapel Hill 2019 Distinguished Alumna recently inducted into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame,” they wrote in a May 19th open letter.

“We demand explanations from the university’s leadership at all levels,” the faculty letter continued. “Nikole Hannah-Jones does necessary and transformative work on America’s racial history.”

The UNC Board of Trustees is seen as having the final word on the Hannah-Jones hiring and tenure issue.

UNC student leaders wrote an open letter to Hannah-Jones, which said in part, “We are frustrated and disappointed that our university, the flagship institution of the UNC System, has failed not only you, an outstanding alumna but its students, its faculty, its community as a whole…”

Protesters with signs interrupted the May 20 UNC Board of Trustees meeting under threat of arrest. The Carolina Black Caucus also issued a letter declaring “We stand in protest.”

Lamar Richards, UNC-Chapel Hill student body president, who also sits on the UNC-Chapel Hill Board, wrote an open letter chastising his colleagues for not taking the matter up in a vote. Though he urged the board to do so, they have not done so.