Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure issue is now back in the hands of UNC Board of Trustees
Tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC-Chapel Hill is officially back up for consideration and in the hands of the university’s Board of Trustees.
Trustee Chuck Duckett told The News & Observer he received the re-submission from the university’s Appointments, Personnel and Tenure Committee, which is made up of tenured professors, on Tuesday.
This doesn’t guarantee that there will be a vote, and it’s unclear when the board may take up the issue. The next official board meeting isn’t scheduled until July 14 and 15, after Hannah-Jones is set to start her job as the Knight Chair for Race and Investigative Journalism at UNC-CH.
Since last week, UNC has been embroiled in controversy because Hannah-Jones was offered and signed a contract for a five-year appointment but was not offered tenure. Previous Knight Chairs in journalism at UNC have been tenured.
Campus, state and national groups have rallied in favor of Hannah-Jones, a MacArthur “Genius Grant” winner who won a Pulitzer Prize for The 1619 Project at The New York Times. The project, which explores the legacy and history of Black Americans and slavery, has been a lightning rod for some conservative politicians.
Many think political concerns may have played into the lack of tenure for Hannah-Jones. But UNC officials say the issue never came before the full university trustee board after Duckett, who chairs the board’s University Affairs Committee, asked to postpone it because of questions he had.
‘I want answers’
On Wednesday, Duckett said that he received Hannah-Jones’s tenure dossier and CV with Tuesday’s submission and that he had not seen it before. His committee of the Board of Trustees vets candidates on behalf of the board before the full board votes for approval.
Hannah-Jones was part of a slate of tenure candidates proposed by Provost Bob Blouin to be considered at the January 2021 board meeting. Duckett contacted Blouin with questions about Hannah-Jones’s candidacy and asked to postpone the review.
Duckett told The N&O that he had questions related to Hannah-Jones’ experience in the classroom, among others, and that no one answered them.
The board never voted then on the matter of tenure for her. Hannah-Jones signed the contract for a fixed-term faculty position, without tenure, that was sent on March 2.
When asked about the precedent that all previous Knight Chairs in the journalism school received tenure upon hire, Duckett said, “just because a board has done something prior does not mean that you’re bound.”
He said he has asked multiple times in the past for a postponement for a tenure candidate when he had questions about that person’s candidacy. In each case, the matter came up at a later time and the candidate was granted tenure, Duckett said.
Regarding the re-submission of Hannah-Jones, Duckett did not say if or when it might be considered by the committee or the full board.
“I want answers before a vote,” Duckett said.
No comment from chancellor
NC Policy Watch reported Wednesday that three board members said they expect the matter to come to a full vote of the board by the end of June.
At the UNC System Board of Governors meeting in Chapel Hill on Wednesday, UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said he could not talk about Hannah-Jones’s tenure being back on the table because it was a personnel matter.
The Board of Governors sets policy for campuses and delegates authority to Boards of Trustees and appoints some members. In 2019, the BOG delegated tenure decisions to trustees. So, this case won’t come to the system for approval and can’t be appealed to the BOG.
UNC System President Peter Hans told The N&O he doesn’t have insight into the reasons behind the decision and it’s been a campus-based issue.
“I don’t believe that any of us here should be evaluating these decisions,” Hans said in an interview outside the Board of Governors meeting Wednesday.
Hans said trustees and the faculty play important roles in these campus decisions and there is a long-standing process that sometimes leads to decisions or outcomes that don’t satisfy everyone. He said his biggest concern is that this issue overshadows really good work happening at Chapel Hill, particularly during the legislative session.
This re-submission comes after the Faculty Executive Committee and Student Body President Lamar Richards demanded immediate action by the trustee board regarding tenure for Hannah-Jones.
Hundreds of professional athletes, scholars, artists, political activists and professional journalists have criticized the board’s decision, or lack thereof, and defended Hannah-Jones and her work, particularly on The 1619 Project. And 1,619 alumni and current students took out a two-page spread advertisement in The News & Observer that was published Wednesday, demanding that the board reconsider tenure for Hannah-Jones.
In a tweet Wednesday, Hannah-Jones expressed thanks for the support she received from in a letter in The Root online magazine and from The N&O ad: “I am grateful for and overwhelmed by everyone who signed this letter and the N&O ad. This fight is not about me: “We call on all people of conscience to decry this growing wave of repression and to encourage a recommitment to the free exchange of ideas.”
UNC history and race commission responds
The UNC Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward sent the Board of Trustees a letter Wednesday condemning their failure to award tenure to Hannah-Jones. The group asked that the board convene a special meeting at the earliest possible date to review the faculty recommendation to appoint Hannah-Jones with tenure.
“To do otherwise imperils the integrity and reputation of the university entrusted to your care,” commission members wrote in the letter.
This commission was created in 2019 and Guskiewicz asked the group “to explore, engage and teach the University’s history with race and provide recommendations” about how UNC must reckon with its past.
“Intentionally or not, you have enlisted the university in the project of historical denialism that refuses to confront the centrality of race and racism in our national past and in the life of our nation, state, and university today,” commission members wrote.
In the letter, the group also noted that two of the sharpest critics of The 1619 Project — Princeton University professors Sean Wilentz and Keith Whittington — defended Hannah-Jones in the Chronicle of Higher Education on May 25. They remain critical, they wrote, but they also “respect the judgment and the authority” of UNC’s faculty and administration.
“For the Board of Trustees to interfere unilaterally on blatantly political grounds is an attack on the integrity of the very institution it oversees,” they wrote.
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 11:47 AM.
