Criticism snowballs for UNC trustees over tenure issue. Angry faculty to meet Monday.

Outrage continued to build Friday against the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees for failing to grant tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times writer named earlier this year as the Knight Chair in the UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism.

The controversy, which has strained the relationship between some faculty and the university administration, was the subject of discussion on Friday’s edition of ABC TV’s “The View.” And the trustees board was chastened Friday in in statements by numerous groups, including:

▪ sitting chairs in 20 other Knight professorships around the country.

▪ the Society of Professional Journalists.

▪ UNC’s Retired Faculty Association.

▪ the UNC Employee Forum.

Hannah-Jones’ case also will be discussed Monday at a special meeting of the UNC Faculty Executive Committee.

Mimi Chapman, faculty chair, said any action taken by the Faculty Executive Committee would be largely symbolic.

“But I think it’s important to convene and bring faculty together to discuss this,” she said by phone on Friday.

Faculty feel demoralized

Chapman complained this week to Chuck Duckett, who heads the Board of Trustees’ University Affairs Committee, that ignoring faculty’s recommendation to grant tenure to Hannah-Jones was demoralizing.

Hannah-Jones is a veteran journalist who led The 1619 Project, exploring the legacy and history of the enslavement of Black people in America. She won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, but the project has faced scrutiny from some historians and conservative politicians and led to a clarification from the New York Times.

When Hannah-Jones’ application for tenure was presented along with others to be considered at the trustees’ January meeting, the board did not act on it. Board of Trustees Chairman Richard Stevens said Thursday that at the time, Duckett had questions. Stevens said that could be considered normal with candidates “that don’t come from a traditional academic-type background.”

In April, UNC announced it had hired Hannah-Jones on a non-tenured, five-year, fixed-term contract. She will start in July, while continuing to work as a journalist for The New York Times.

The Knight Foundation, which funds the professorship, does not require schools to grant tenure for those hired under the program. However, in the past, all Knight Chairs at UNC’s Hussman School have been tenured positions. The program is designed to bring non-academics into the university.

Why was Hannah-Jones questioned?

Chapman said she has been hearing from outraged faculty across the campus: in the hard sciences, the humanities, the law school and the medical school. It falls into two categories, she said: anger that the Board of Trustees had overridden the faculty by ignoring its recommendation to hire Hannah-Jones with tenure; and over what looks like unfair treatment.

It raises issues, Chapman said, “Over whether this is happening because this is a person who is a Black woman and writes about race. What is it about her portfolio that is so different from other Knight chairs who were also non-academics but nevertheless came into UNC with tenure with no questions?”

Chapman said that if trustees treat Hannah-Jones differently, they might also interfere with the hiring or tenure of candidates whose fields of study they deem unworthy or too controversial.

“That undermines the entire system on which the university bases itself,” Chapman said. “That’s a problem.”