Nikole Hannah-Jones
Interesting and refreshing news out of the University of North Carolina. I have been reporting through gathered stories on this issue for months now in North Carolina Open Thread on Sundays. This morning the story took a surprise turn as the Pulitzer Prize winner announced her decision to leave UNC.
In an exclusive interview, Hannah-Jones reveals that she and fellow award-winning journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates will launch new Center for Democracy and Journalism at Washington, DC HBCU
After months of public controversy and behind-the-scenes political struggles, acclaimed journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has decided not to join the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Instead, the Pulitzer Prize winner will join the faculty at Howard University, where the Knight Foundation has established an endowed professorship in Race and Journalism for her — with tenure. There, at the most prestigious of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, she plans to create the Center for Journalism and Democracy. Acclaimed journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, a Howard alum and close friend of Hannah-Jones, will join her at the school.
Hannah-Jones and Coates bring to Howard $20 million that foundations and individuals have already contributed to their positions and the new center.
The decision wasn’t an easy one, Hannah-Jones told Policy Watch in an exclusive interview this week. But the political quagmire in the UNC System and lack of transparency and support from school leadership ultimately made it inevitable. “Literally the day the story broke, I started hearing from universities,” Hannah-Jones said. “At one school the dean said to me, ‘We’ll offer you tenure and respect.’”
Some background
After months of delay and amid mounting pressure, UNC Chapel Hill trustees approve tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones.
After months of tabling her dossier and a three-hour closed-door meeting Wednesday, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees approved tenure for journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. The vote, which happened in public, was 9 to 4.
News that the board refused to vote on Hannah-Jones’s tenure case has rocked the North Carolina campus since May. The board has faced criticism from faculty members, students and alumni for its handling of the case, and Hannah-Jones herself has accused the board of violating her First Amendment rights and discriminating against her as a Black woman.
The board has treated Hannah-Jones’s tenure case differently than most other cases that come before it, as typically it rubber-stamps tenure for professors who, like Hannah-Jones, have strong recommendations from their peers and administrators. Hannah-Jones is to hold the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at North Carolina, and all Knight chairs there before her were granted tenure without delay. H/T-VClib
The Daily Tarhill Lauren McCarthy May 27, 2021
UNC has until Friday, June 4, to offer Nikole Hannah-Jones a tenured position or face a federal lawsuit, according to a letter obtained by NC Policy Watch.
The letter, written by the attorneys representing Hannah-Jones, outlines the case, including Hannah-Jones' qualifications and the timeline of her recruitment and tenure application. The letter was sent to Charles Marshall, the University's vice chancellor and general counsel.
"The reasons for UNC's denial of tenure to Ms. Hannah-Jones can only be understood as the product of political and racially discriminatory backlash against her life's work investigating, documenting, reporting, and uplifting Black Americans' fight against generational subjugation through racial oppression and structural injustice," the attorneys wrote.
The Daily Tathill, Kayleigh Carpenter and Trevor Moore May 20, 2021
Around 50 people, including UNC faculty and students and Chapel Hill community members, gathered at 8:15 a.m. on Thursday to show their support for Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and creator of the 1619 Project, ahead of the UNC Board of Trustees’ 9 a.m. meeting at The Carolina Inn.
The rally was organized by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP and the Carolina Black Caucus in response to the Board of Trustees' choice to not take action on approving Hannah-Jones’ tenure as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism for the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, which was first reported by NC Policy Watch.
People lined the entrance of the inn holding signs reading “Support Genius not Ignorance,” “I can give you 1619 reasons why Hannah-Jones should be tenured” and “Nikole Hannah-Jones is all of us #ProtectBlackFaculty.”
Chapel Hill buses, a cement truck, cars and other vehicles honked their horns in a show of support as they drove past. <HT VcLib>
New York Times, Oct. 13, 2017, Jake Silverstein
On Wednesday, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 24 recipients of its annual fellowship, often called the “genius grant,” which awards $625,000, no strings attached, to “exceptionally creative people” each year. Among those who received the unexpected phone call this year was Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, whose work, rooted in deeply researched historical insight, focuses on endemic racism in housing and education.
Ms. Hannah-Jones’s article for the magazine documenting school segregation won a National Magazine Award earlier this year. Before that, she received a Peabody and a George Polk Award for work on the topic. She is also a founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting.
On Thursday, we sat down for a discussion about her work. An edited excerpt follows.
So, first of all, what was it like to get the call?
It was great. Surreal, astounding. When you first get the call, it’s just disbelief because it comes out of nowhere. You don’t know you’re being considered for it. You can’t apply for it. Just one day someone calls and says you’re going to get this thing.
Thanks for reading.