Chapel Hill, N.C. — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones was supposed to begin her new job at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Thursday, but after so much controversy surrounding her tenure, she has officially declined the offer to teach at her alma mater.
"This is my alma mater...it was embarrassing...I didn't want this to be a public scandal," she said.
Instead, she will be accepting a position at Howard University as the Inaugural Knight Chair.
Faculty from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media shared their reaction within a few minutes of her announcement, saying, "Today, we learned that Ms. Nikole Hannah-Jones has declined a tenured appointment as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media."
"While disappointed, we are not surprised. We support Ms. Hannah-Jones' choice. The appalling treatment of one of our nation's most decorated journalists by her own alma mater was humiliating, inappropriate and unjust," they wrote. "We will be frank: It was racist."
"It is understandable why Ms. Hannah-Jones would take her brilliance elsewhere," they wrote.
Hannah-Jones explained her decision, saying that having been granted tenure only after weeks of protest, the threat of legal action and a national scandal, "It's just not something I want anymore."
Instead, she'll bring her award-winning experience to Howard University, a historically black university. She said, "Since the second grade, when I started being bussed to white schools, I spent my entire life proving I belonged in elite white spaces that were not built for Black people."
Her experience with UNC, she said, helped clarify that Howard University is the right place for her in this moment.
Howard University will benefit, not only from Hannah-Jones' experience, but from a combined $20 million from Hannah-Jones' MacArthur fellowship, combined with another MacArthur fellow also planning to join Howard.
"The appointments are supported by $20 million donated by the MacArthur, Knight, and Ford foundations, as well as by an anonymous donor, to support Howard’s continued education of and investment in Black journalists," wrote Howard University in a statement.
Hannah-Jones posted a tweet sharing her interview along with empowering emojis a few minutes after announcing her decision.
The response to her tweet was a swarm of supportive posts welcoming her to the Howard University family.
Hannah-Jones also tweeted that she is "Still a Tarheel" and will continue to support positive efforts at the university.
Hannah-Jones explains how UNC leaders can "redeem themselves"
“In the case of my tenure, the university has, begrudgingly, done the absolute minimum. In a split vote, it did what it was supposed to have done 7 months ago and, in doing so, many believe the university has resolved the issue. It has not," said Hannah-Jones in a quote on the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund website.
"If the leaders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sincerely wish to redeem themselves, to live up to the university’s status as the people’s university, I would humbly suggest they do the following, at a minimum," she said.
She said the leaders should apologize both publicly and privately to student protesters who she says were treated disrespectfully. She also said they could dedicate themselves to addressing demands issued by the Black Student Movement.
She also said they should address demands issued by the Carolina Black Caucus – and that efforts should include targets for recruiting, supporting and retaining Black faculty.
"I would have been just the second tenured Black woman professor in the 70-year history of the UNC journalism school, and I would have been its first and only Black woman full professor. Black women account for just 1.9 percent of tenured faculty at UNC, and Black professors together account for just 5 percent in a state that is 22 percent Black and at a university where the student body is 11 percent Black," she said.
Hannah-Jones said she would like the leaders to be transparent with why her tenure was not voted on in November.
"To date, neither myself, Dean King, my legal counsel, nor the public, have ever been told directly by the university why my tenure was not voted on in November. Public records requests by both journalists and residents have gone unfulfilled," she said. "This is unacceptable for a public university."
Battle for tenure a "public scandal"
Hannah-Jones, a UNC-Chapel Hill alumna and New York Times reporter, was hired in April as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She won the Pulitzer, a Peabody Award and a "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for "The 1619 Project" about slavery's lasting impact on America.
Although university officials recommended her for tenure, and most of the Knight Chair faculty positions nationwide funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are tenured, the Board of Trustees delayed voting on her tenure application for months because some members questioned her academic qualifications. Instead, she was offered a five-year contract.
Some of her supporters argued that the tenure delay was racially and politically motivated because of her 1619 Project work. Her lack of tenure became a national cause célèbre, with journalists nationwide excoriating UNC-Chapel Hill for its handling of the situation, and faculty, students and alumni demanding in protests, newspaper ads and social media posts that the Board of Trustees vote on the matter.
The board finally voted 9-4 on Wednesday to grant her tenure.
"These last weeks have been very challenging and difficult, and I need to take some time to process all that has occurred and determine what is the best way forward," she said in a statement following the vote.
Students are now registering for classes this fall, and an investigative reporting class she was scheduled to teach is no longer on the schedule, while a magazine writing course just lists "staff" as the instructor after earlier having her name attached to it.
A spokesperson for the Hussman School said Hannah-Jones was still listed on UNC Hussman's internal schedule and within registration information the school sent to its students on Thursday.
"We're looking into the issue of her not being listed elsewhere," a spokeswoman added.
Hussman School professors WRAL News talked with on Thursday said they have no idea whether Hannah-Jones will eventually teach there after the tenure fight.
"I hope she does come. We’d love to have her in the department," Associate Professor Deen Freelon said. "The decision is ultimately hers, and I would not blame her at all if she decided to go elsewhere or not to do academia at all."
"If she is seeking my advice, I would say take the job right now," Professor Deb Aikat said. "She will be a great person to have on campus as one of our colleagues."
Either way, both men said UNC-Chapel Hill has been damaged by the tenure fight.
"Obviously, it’s not a great look for UNC. It’s very problematic. I’m sure it sends the wrong message," Freelon said.
The tenure fight is only the latest episode at UNC-Chapel Hill that members of the school's Black community say contributes to a negative environment for them on campus. First, it was years of protests over a long-standing "Silent Sam" Confederate monument on campus, and that was followed by an aborted deal that would have given the statue – protesters pulled it down three years ago – and millions of dollars to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
"I hope that the administration will learn a lesson from this. I don’t know how many more scandals it’s going to take," Freelon said. "We hope that the next time that something like this happens, there won’t need to be a massive pressure campaign to get the administration to do what they should do."
Aikat agreed that he hopes UNC-Chapel Hill can use the episode as a learning experience and make changes to improve. If that happens, he said, the school's image can recover.
"Am I worried about the crisis we are going through? Yes. But this is not the first crisis ... and this is truthfully not the last," he said. "In a strange way, it brings a great reputation to UNC if we can solve it."
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