About 20 Black faculty and staff at UNC-Chapel Hill say they are considering leaving the university because they feel undervalued on campus, particularly in light of journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones not being offered tenure.
Members of the Carolina Black Caucus took a poll at their regularly scheduled Zoom meeting this week and found that 70% of the about 30 attendees are considering leaving UNC-CH and more than 60% of them are actively looking for other jobs. The group announced the news in a tweet Wednesday.
The Carolina Black Caucus is made up of about 250 faculty, staff graduate students and alumni who advocate for equal rights across campus for Black faculty, staff and community members.
“We feel as though we’re treated differently when it comes to things like tenure, raises and promotions,” said Jaci Field, co-chair of the group’s advocacy committee. “We feel like we’re generally undervalued at Carolina.”
Field is also the director of the Eddie Smith Field House in the UNC Athletics Department.
Though just 30 members were in attendance Wednesday, Field said they think this poll is endemic of the climate for all Black people at UNC. Black employees feel uncomfortable at Carolina and don’t want to stay, she said.
“It’s been a conversation that we’ve been having for a couple of years,” Field said. “The Nikole Hannah-Jones situation really just brings the issue to the forefront.”
Hannah-Jones, who is a Black woman, is set to join the faculty at UNC-CH in July as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The UNC campus Board of Trustees has not offered Hannah-Jones tenure for that position, which previous Knight Chairs at UNC-CH have received. She is best known for her Pulizter Prize-winning work on The 1619 Project, which aims to reframe the country’s history by putting slavery and Black Americans at the center of it.
The issue 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, particularly surrounding The 1619 Project.
And at least one top faculty recruit withdrew her candidacy because of the situation.
Hannah-Jones’s attorneys threatened a federal lawsuit in May, saying UNC-CH “unlawfully discriminated against Hannah-Jones based on the content of her journalism and scholarship and because of her race.” No lawsuit has been filed yet, but university lawyers are talking with her legal team.
“Especially over the last year and a half, this is exactly what we’ve been trying to describe to everyone,” Field said. “This very situation is the definition of systemic racism.”
UNC-CH has 226 Black or African American full-time faculty members as of Fall 2020, according to a university report. And 69 of them have tenure, which is about 30%. Black and African American faculty members also make up less than 5% of the total tenured faculty. There are more than 4,000 total full-time faculty members at UNC-CH.
About 8% of UNC-CH’s student body are Black or African American students.
Student Body President Lamar Richards, who is Black, tweeted this week that he’s spoken to more than a dozen incoming undergraduate students of color and their families over the past week who are concerned about the campus environment.
Richards said “many, if not all, of them are reconsidering coming to Carolina” and he firmly supports that decision.
“I love my people too much & UNC is not worthy of us. Period,” Richards said.
Richards and other student leaders sent the same message in a letter written directly to Hannah-Jones saying UNC does not create an environment for Black academics to flourish, particularly Black women.
“Knowing this and recognizing the critical importance of upholding the integrity and impact of your work, we cannot ask you to come here,” the letter said.
It’s understandable why students and faculty wouldn’t feel safe coming to Carolina, Field said.
And while she supports her colleagues who don’t feel valued and want to leave, she believes some need to stay at the university, even if Black faculty and staff aren’t recognized appropriately.
“Someone has to stay in the fight and stand up for everyone else that can’t and for those that come after us,” Field said. “We’ll stay and continue the fight but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to be quiet and that doesn’t mean that we’re going to accept less than.”
Field said they will continue to empower and uplift Black people at Carolina, dig in their heels and fight for their employer to “value our experience and our scholarship and our humanity.”
The environment had been improving over the past two years with the new chancellor and new leadership, she said. They’d fought through the issues with the Silent Sam Confederate monument on campus, she said, and were making progress.
“It felt like we were climbing out of this hole, and then the Board of Trustees stood on our fingers as we were about to climb out,” Field said. “It really was getting better.”
Field applauded the work that UNC-CH Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz has done to continue the conversation of racial justice, particularly through the Commission on Race, History and A Way Forward.
“He’s done a great job listening and creating some new initiatives for hiring minorities and restructuring the diversity equity and inclusion program,” Field said. “It’s a shame that we’ve gone so far back with just one incident.”
In a statement Thursday, Guskiewicz said, “It has always been my goal to build a community where everyone truly knows they belong and are valued for their own unique perspectives and experiences. I am deeply concerned that some members of the Carolina Black community do not feel they can thrive in this environment. I am meeting with the leaders of the Carolina Black Caucus next week to listen to their concerns and reaffirm my commitment to working as hard as I can to help create that sense of belonging.”
What can be done to change the minds of Black faculty who want to leave the university? The first step is to honor the tenure process and grant Hannah-Jones the tenure appointment she deserves, Field said.
That is currently in the hands of the UNC-CH trustees who have Hannah-Jones’s tenure application materials and can call a meeting to vote to approve her tenure at any time.
Members of the Carolina Black Caucus protested outside the Board of Trustees meeting in May, days after the news broke that Hannah-Jones was not granted tenure. UNC leaders tried to explain the decision as protests and nationwide criticism of UNC mounted.
The group is asking the board to move quickly on this issue now, Field said, so that no more damage is done and they can start the healing process again as a university.
Mimi Chapman, chair of the UNC-CH faculty, was alarmed by the Carolina Black Caucus statement about employees wanting to leave, but said it does speak to strong feelings on campus surrounding the Hannah-Jones situation.
“The longer this situation is unresolved, the greater distress we are going to experience as a faculty,” Chapman said.
She said it comes down to Black faculty and staff not feeling like they’re contributing to an institution they can believe in and questioning whether the institution is really on their side.
There’s a dissonance between people at the university working to reckon with UNC’s history and rebuild trust and an environment that doesn’t allow the institution to make the kind of progress it wants, Chapman said.
“It’s hard because there are a lot of people on campus, within the faculty staff and leadership that are wanting to do the right thing and confront these issues,” Chapman said. “And that is being thwarted by the political context in which this university currently exists.”
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