Acclaimed journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones says she will not teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill following an extended fight over tenure that made national headlines.
After months of indecision, UNC trustees held a special meeting last week to offer tenure to Hannah-Jones, key architect of the 1619 Project for The New York Times Magazine, which explored the legacy of racism.
The university had announced in April that Hannah-Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project, would join the faculty in July. She had accepted a five-year contract to join the journalism school’s faculty as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.
Earlier in the year, Hannah-Jones’ tenure application was halted after complaints from conservatives and at least one trustee and a donor about the 1619 Project.
The school has said little about why tenure was not offered, but a prominent donor revealed he had emailed university leaders challenging her work as “highly contentious and highly controversial” before the process was halted.
Hannah-Jones announced Tuesday she would not stay on at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, choosing instead, along with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, to join the faculty of Howard University, one of the most prestigious historically Black universities in the country.
Hannah-Jones’ decision is a win for Howard University and a loss for the University of North Carolina.
The decision is also a win for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) which don’t always have the pull or the resources that predominantly white institutions have to bring in big-name faculty.
“I have been very, very thoughtful about my decision to go to an historically Black college, and what I decided is since the second grade, when I started being bused into white schools, I’ve spent my entire life proving that I belong in white spaces that were not built for Black people,” Hannah-Jones said in an appearance on “CBS This Morning” with Gayle King.
But after months of grappling with the university over her tenure, Hannah-Jones was done, she said.
“I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore,” she said. “That Black professionals should feel free and actually perhaps an obligation to go to our own institutions and bring our talents and resources to our own institutions and help to build them up as well.”
Howard University has been one of the best-known and most esteemed HBCUs in the country since its founding in 1867. Howard boasts an alumni list that includes the likes of author Toni Morrison, actor Chadwick Boseman and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Hannah-Jones, one of the nation’s top journalists, will now bring her talents to Howard University.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune.)
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