UNC Reneges On Tenure Position For Nikole Hannah-Jones Over 1619 Project

The same good ol’ boys who incessantly b!tc# and complain about “cancel culture” are now attempting to cancel a deserving Black woman’s professional path because they don’t like the truth.

Source: Marcus Ingram / Getty

The running joke on Twitter is that “Bossip deserves a Pulitzer” and while we humbly accept the praise and adulation, there are actual Pulitzer Prize winners who are being done dirty by one of the most prestigious institutions in Amerikkka. Nikole Hannah-Jones is the recipient of the aforementioned Pulitzer but she is also the winner of the esteemed MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant, a deeply-respected investigative journalist, a recent UrbanOne Honors honoree, and an alumnus of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2003, she graduated from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and has been reporting on race in powerful ways ever since. One such medium for her journalistic acumen is the now-“controversial” 1619 Project that essentially read this country for filth with facts and historical context that has driven the conservative right absolutely bats#!t crazy. The idea that the country that the “facts over feelings” crowd claims to love could be racist, bigoted, and violent toward melanated people is absurd to them. It’s a little bit ironic, don’t ya think?

Among her many accolades, Professor Hannah-Jones was recently set to be offered tenure at her alma mater as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. However, the soup cookies who sit on the Board of Trustees at UNC have been…disenchanted by her truth-telling in the 1619 Project after feeling the political pressure from their kkkonservative kkkompadres on the right. According to NC Policy Watch, on July 1, instead of starting a career-long appointment, Nikole Hannah-Jones will complete her first day of a five-year contract with the school as a Professor of the Practice. As you might imagine, this has ruffled a great many feathers, and rightly so.

The dean of UNC Hussman, Susan King, has this to say about this unprecedented and highly suspect move, “I’m not sure why and I’m not sure if that’s ever happened before.” NC Policy Watch states that every single Knights Chair professor that has been employed at UNC-Chapel Hill since 1980 has received full tenure, all of them. Frustrated members of the board have spoken out about this janky-a$$ s#!t under the condition of anonymity.

“This is a very political thing,” the trustee said. “The university and the board of trustees and the Board of Governors and the legislature have all been getting pressure since this thing was first announced last month. There have been people writing letters and making calls, for and against. But I will leave it to you which is carrying more weight.”

Things are so bad in the academic community that dozens of protesters comprised of faculty (some of whom helped nominated Hannah-Jones for the tenure) and community members stood outside the board’s meeting this morning to make their voices heard.

This whole thing should be an embarrassment to the brass at UNC-Chapel Hill but it’s not and that’s the problem. Over the years, right-wingers in academia have lamented the fact that college campuses have become more progressive and won’t allow for racist and ignorant schools of thought to permeate freely. But now a scholarly and well-decorated Black woman who is simply stating the facts while upholding the vaunted tenets of journalism isn’t befitting of a life-long appointment?

Sounds about white to us.

While UNC-Chapel Hill is doing Nikole Hannah-Jones dirty, the Urban One Honors recently celebrated her and gave her well-deserved flowers. The scholar was given the Groundbreaking Excellence in Journalism Honor during Sunday’s ceremony.

Celebrate Ms. Jones with us at the top of this post.