UNC board grants tenure to acclaimed journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones

The 9-4 vote followed more than two hours of debate behind closed doors.

"Professor Hannah-Jones will add great value to our university, our students are eager to learn from her and we are ready to welcome her to the Carolina faculty as soon as possible," Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said after the vote.

Hannah-Jones tweeted a photo of herself toasting the vote. She had been scheduled to start work in Chapel Hill Thursday, but it's unclear when she will actually begin.

"Today’s outcome and the actions of the past month are about more than just me," she said in a statement. "This fight is about ensuring the journalistic and academic freedom of Black writers, researchers, teachers and students. We must ensure that our work is protected and able to proceed free from the risk of repercussions, and we are not there yet. These last weeks have been very challenging and difficult, and I need to take some time to process all that has occurred and determine what is the best way forward."

"Members of this board have endured false claims and have been called the most unpleasant of names for the past few weeks," Vice Chairman Gene Davis said after the vote. "Our university is not a place to cancel people or ideas. Neither is it a place for judging people or calling them names, like 'woke' or 'racist.' Our university is better than that."

Black faculty members have said in recent weeks that they plan to leave UNC-Chapel Hill because they don't feel valued, and Black students said the university continues to preach diversity and inclusion but doesn't follow that up with action.

"This is an important day for our campus," Guskiewicz said. "We still have a lot more work ahead and are committed to working to build our community together to ensure that all voices are heard and that everyone on our campus knows they belong."

Dozens of students, mostly Black, angrily confronted Davis and Guskiewicz after the board meeting to criticize their comments.

"That the expression of how they were feeling is very fair," Davis said Wednesday evening. "It’s important for us to recognize that there are a lot of different feelings, and the beginning point for our country is in listening."

Before the vote, some students had to be forcibly removed from the room by police when they refused to leave as the board went into closed session. The protest continued in a hallway outside, where organizers used a bullhorn to voice their displeasure.

"Y'all think you're safe hiding behind those doors? You're not," one woman shouted through the bullhorn.

Protesters also criticized Student Body President Lamar Richards, who is a member of the Board of Trustees, for voting to go into closed session.

Richards responded by saying that he had spoken to Hannah-Jones, and she asked that the tenure debate not be held in public. He also tweeted that tenure decisions are usually made in closed session, so he saw no reason to treat her situation differently.

"This entire situation has been a travesty, an embarrassment on a national scale for our university and for our student body," said Taliajah Vann, president of the Black Student Movement, demanding that the trustees apologize to Hannah-Jones for the delay. "You could, at the very least, take this moment to say, 'We are sorry. We made a mistake.'"

Carol Shirley, a Hussman School graduate, said the situation has been painful for her and rekindled unpleasant memories from her own days on the Chapel Hill campus.

"I experienced some of the same things that these students are crying out about, and we just need change," Shirley said. "It's incredibly painful to witness their pain and to relive my own and to see this happening to this institution and university that I love so much."

Hussman School Dean Susan King called Hannah-Jones "a journalist's journalist, a teacher's teacher and a woman of substance with a voice of consequence."

"She will make our school better with her presence. She will deepen the university's commitment to intellectual integrity and to access for all," King said in a statement.

Walter Hussman, the donor for whom the journalism school is named, noted that he had expressed reservations about linking the school to Hannah-Jones and the 1619 Project. But he issued a statement Wednesday evening that he respects the board's tenure vote.

"I look forward to meeting her and discussing journalism," he said. "Our plan is to continue to support the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media in advocating for the core values" of objectivity, impartiality, integrity, the pursuit of truth and the separation of news and opinion.