RALEIGH, N.C. — UNC Faculty Chair Mimi Chapman published an open letter Saturday asking university employees, students and supporters to press trustees to approve tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones, saying action is needed to salvage UNC’s reputation and academic integrity.
The letter, shared on Twitter, summarizes some of the developments so far in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media’s hiring of the New York Times journalist. Hannah-Jones, a Black woman, is set to join the faculty at UNC-CH in July as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. The UNC campus Board of Trustees has not offered Hannah-Jones tenure for that position, which previous Knight Chairs at UNC-CH have received.
Hannah-Jones is best known for her work on The 1619 Project, exploring the legacy and history of Black Americans and slavery. She created the project and won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020 for her essay in it.
Her treatment by UNC has caused national outrage among professional journalists, scholars and UNC-CH faculty, alumni and students who have defended Hannah-Jones and demanded she get tenure. Critics have pointed to race and politics as the reasons behind the board’s decisions.
In her letter, Chapman criticized the UNC Board of Trustees for its failure to respond to the controversy.
“Despite calls for action from the Faculty Executive Committee, from individual faculty members, from the Council of Chairs, from alumnae, from donors, and from funders to act without delay on the tenure case of Nikole Hannah-Jones, thus far, the Board of Trustees, to which our University is entrusted, has remained stubbornly silent.,” Chapman wrote. “The reputational threat to our University grows by the day and we remain in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.”
Chapman went on to ask the university and its supporters to speak out with “one voice.” She asked every dean and every department chair on campus to send statements to the board of trustees and to put them on their websites; for student groups, especially those that espouse free speech, to speak out; for athletes and coaches to take a stand; and for parents and citizens to call lawmakers and write their local papers.
“You do not have to agree with Ms. Hannah-Jones’ conclusions in The 1619 Project to do this,” Chapman wrote. “You only have to agree that faculty voice must govern the tenure process for academic integrity to have meaning. If outside bodies, in this case the BOT, without subject matter expertise are the arbiters of faculty scholarship, all faculty members run the risk of being punished for work that questions the status quo, threatens some outside interest, or makes people uncomfortable.
“Such a path takes us back to times when scholars from Socrates to Galileo were punished for their ideas,” Chapman said. “That is a path where light and liberty die. Don’t let it. Use your voice. Keep going. Stand strong.”
UNC’s Black Student Movement has planned a “Solidarity Demonstration” at the South Building on campus at noon on Friday. In a tweet announcing the rally, the BSM said, “Nikole Hannah-Jones is being denied a tenured position at UNC by the Board of Trustees due to an alleged lack of merit. Nikole Hannah-Jones has won a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant, and a Peabody Award while being an alumna of UNC.” The group also tweeted that Hannah-Jones’ treatment by UNC is “yet another example of UNC not supporting their Black students and staff.”
About 20 Black faculty and staff have said they are considering leaving the university because they feel undervalued on campus, particularly in light of Hannah-Jones not being offered tenure.
Hannah-Jones’ attorneys threatened a lawsuit over her tenure case in late May, saying UNC-CH “unlawfully discriminated against Hannah-Jones based on the content of her journalism and scholarship and because of her race.”
Attorneys from the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund Inc., Levy Ratner PC, and Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter, P.A. also notified state lawmakers and UNC-CH officials that they were representing Hannah-Jones.
They gave UNC-CH a deadline to offer her tenure, NC Policy Watch reported. The trustees did not meet that deadline, but no lawsuit was filed. UNC-Chapel Hill officials and Hannah-Jones’ legal team have been talking for more than a week about her employment at the university.
The UNC-CH board can meet at any time to discuss and vote on Hannah-Jones’ tenure appointment, as it received an official submission with the relevant materials to review. However, the board has not called a special meeting. Its next meeting is scheduled for July 14 and 15 in Chapel Hill, after Hannah-Jones is set to start her job.
The prestigious Knight Chair position is designed to bring successful industry professionals into academia and has historically come with tenure at Carolina. Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for The New York Times and has earned a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” a Peabody Award and a George Polk Award in her nearly 20-year career. She earned her master’s degree from UNC-CH.
The 1619 Project has faced scrutiny from some historians and conservative politicians and led to a clarification from The Times, though the paper stands by her work. More than 150 scholars and UNC-CH faculty have defended Hannah-Jones and her work. The project has also recently been debated in Congress and state legislatures as an example of an educational program that teaches about systemic racism and slavery.
The journalism school’s namesake and top donor Walter Hussman Jr., expressed concerns about Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project to university officials, as first reported by The Assembly. Hussman told The News & Observer he was not trying to pressure anyone not to hire her or give her tenure and either decision would not affect his financial commitment to the school.
At the center of the controversy is Hannah-Jones’s involvement with The 1619 Project, which some say negatively affected her tenure candidacy and the board’s decision. If true, faculty and their advocates say, this illustrates the importance of academic freedom and why tenure protects faculty.
University leaders have made clear that the board never denied her tenure because it never voted on the matter.
Hannah-Jones was submitted with other tenure candidates for the January 2021 trustees meeting. Trustee Chuck Duckett, who chairs the committee that vets tenure candidates on behalf of the board, said he had questions about Hannah-Jones, including her teaching experience. He asked to postpone the matter to get answers, according to the university.
Instead, in March, Hannah-Jones was offered a fixed-term contract, with the option of being reviewed for tenure within five years. The announcement of her hiring was made in April.
Hannah-Jones is set to start her job on campus July 1.
