https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/university-denies-1619-project-creator-hannah-joseph-klein/
The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC) declined to approve Nikole Hannah-Jones for a tenured teaching position immediately. She is the prominent New York Times investigative journalist who created the controversial 1619 Project. UNC offered Hannah-Jones instead a fixed five-year contract to teach at its prestigious Hussman School of Journalism and Media as “Professor of the Practice,” which she accepted, with the prospect of future tenure consideration. UNC’s Board of Trustees made the right call by declining to offer Hannah-Jones a tenured professorship for now. Aside from Hannah-Jones’ lack of academic experience, she has shown herself to be ethically challenged as a journalist.
Hannah-Jones was not cancelled from teaching at UNC. She still is eligible for a future tenured position after review of her teaching and academic research record at the university. Nevertheless, there was outrage on and off campus at the cancelling of Hannah-Jones’ hopes for immediate tenure.
The Raleigh-Apex NAACP issued a statement saying the decision not to approve immediate tenure for Hannah-Jones is a “real case of cancel culture.” Faculty members and student government leaders wrote letters of protest.
The faculty letter claimed that the failure to offer Hannah-Jones tenure “unfairly moves the goalposts and violates long-standing norms and established processes relating to tenure and promotion at UNC Chapel Hill.” The student letter stated: “We cannot stand by as our University routinely diminishes and undercuts marginalized and BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] voices in academia in an effort to bend toward partisan pressures rooted in a fear of America’s historical truths.”
Over three dozen students, faculty and community members protested as the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees was meeting on May 20th. Some of the signs they held said “Abolish the BOT,” “#BlackHistoryMatters,” “#BlackWomenMatter,” “Nikole Hannah Jones is all of us,” and “UNC = Klan University lovers of racist ignorance!!”
Over 200 academics, journalists, and celebrities published a letter on May 25th condemning the failure to grant immediate tenure to Hannah-Jones. “The University’s Board of Trustees has failed to uphold the first order values of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas,” the letter said.