Editorial: Nikole Hannah-Jones -- Take the UNC job
CBC Editorial: Thursday, May 27, 2021; Editorial #8672
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company.
Two important things need to happen, quickly, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
1. Nikole Hannah-Jones needs to join the faculty. Her qualifications and the times demand it.
2. The university’s board of trustees MUST go on the record and vote on her tenure request – which has been routine for others in that job. No credible board would dodge their duty.
As is evident from the outpouring of support from the UNC faculty, not to mention hundreds of academic leaders nationwide, Hannah-Jones will be welcomed as a member of the academic community.
The university’s administration and trustees cannot stay silent on the tenure issue. Failing to act is denial, but keeps those responsible from being accountable. They cannot dodge their responsibility or the obligation. Trustees must each go on the record. They must state why Hannah-Jones is being treated differently.
Hannah-Jones has other offers for professorships from the nation’s top academic posts. Her failure to join the UNC faculty will be Chapel Hill’s loss and the others’ gain. The already stained reputation of UNC, from a variety of administrative missteps over the last decade, will make it indelible.
She cannot let the ideologues win. She needs to be UNC’s next Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.
She cannot let the legislative leadership -- who directly and indirectly hold power to name campus trustees -- and their minions show they’ve wrested control of a nation-leading system of higher education that’s taken a century to build.
In December 2016, shortly after Democrat Roy Cooper was elected and before he took office, the Republican-controlled General Assembly stripped the governor of appointments to the boards of trustees of the constituent campuses of the University of North Carolina system. The new law essentially gives the leadership of the legislature sole authority over who serves on the campus boards of trustees. Prior to the new law the UNC Board of Governors, who are placed in their posts by the legislature, named eight of the 13 members of the local campus boards and the governor named four. Now those four are named specifically by the Senate and House leaders. (Session Law 2016-126 , Part II, Section 35) |
In that tradition of higher education leadership and academic freedom, she will teach her students to identify facts, understand complicated nuance and to have the skills to be independent thinkers.
In a UNC classroom she will show those who want to silence her,really are seeking a system of higher indoctrination – not higher education. Every day those seeking to close the minds of those searching for knowledge at UNC will look and see in Hannah-Jones someone who -- regardless of who the students are, where they come from or their personal perspective – is devoted to opening minds and welcomes dialogue from diverse points of view.
That will be a victory for the University of North Carolina, for academic independence and for Nikole Hannah-Jones. Ideologues and education bureaucrats cannot be allowed to chase her away and give comfort to those who seek to put a limit on academic freedom.
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The controversy over Hannah-Jones' appointment isn’t about qualifications. She’s won a MacArthur genius fellowship. She’s been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. She’s won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary along with Peabody and Polk awards. Her career, vast body of work and accomplishments merit her appointment.
Others previously appointed to the Knight chair at UNC – who similarly to Hannah-Jones didn’t come from an academic background -- were tenured. The late Chuck Stone, a Tuskegee Airman and newspaper columnist was tenured as the Walter Spearman Professor at the school.
Because of a statement in an essay that was part of The New York Times 1619 Project she oversaw, Hannah-Jones has become a lightning rod for ideologues seeking to abridge teachings about slavery, segregation and racism in schools.
The essay Hannah-Jones wrote was the subject of a March 2020 clarification, “to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them.”
If anything, this is testament to her openness in contrast to the ideological rigidness of her detractors.
UNC Board of Trustees Chair Richard Stevens has said the board didn't deny Hannah-Jones tenure. It just didn’t do anything about her request because at least one trustee questioned her qualifications for a tenured appointment that protects “a faculty member against involuntary suspension, demotion, discharge, or termination from employment by the University except upon specified grounds and in accordance with specified procedures.”
Steven’s statement is a dodge. This appointment and granting of tenure aren’t about academic credentials. It is about politics.
Stevens is no political novice. He’s a former Republican state senator and was named to the UNC board by Senate Leader Phil Berger and his current term concludes at the end of June.
Hannah-Jones cannot let the detractors keep her from taking the job.
We urge her to be even more determined to demonstrate her skill to impart the best lessons of open inquiry. And, just as significantly, be a living reminder of someone who exposed the subtlety and lingering legacy of systemic bias in American life.
