Hannah-Jones a reminder of UNC’s trust issues
Editor’s note: The Editorial Board welcomes intern Paige Masten, a 2021 UNC graduate and former editorial page editor of the Daily Tar Heel.
The University of North Carolina is embroiled in controversy once again after denying Nikole Hannah-Jones, acclaimed journalist and creator of The 1619 Project, a tenured position at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
As numerous outlets have reported, Hannah-Jones was offered and signed a contract for a five-year appointment as the Knight Chair for Race and Investigative Journalism, but was not offered tenure. Previous Knight Chairs in journalism at UNC have been tenured.
Also troubling is how the University has once again handled a controversy of its own making —with a troubling lack of transparency. Students and faculty alike have been left in the dark. Why didn’t the Board grant tenure to Hannah-Jones, despite glowing recommendations from faculty? Why wasn’t it brought to a vote before the full board? Why won’t they speak about it openly, in the public eye?
After weathering no shortage of scandals in recent years, you’d think UNC would have learned something. Yet administrators still seem incapable of being forthright.
The result is that faculty and students feel UNC cannot be trusted. It’s hard to trust an institution that’s constantly shrouded in secrecy, leaving us with more questions instead of answers. It’s hard to trust an institution that at times seems to lack a moral compass. And it’s hard to trust an institution that remains complicit as its integrity is continually undermined.
The Board of Trustees’ decision to deny tenure to Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient — and the lack of transparency surrounding that decision — is not at all surprising. After all, this is the same institution that offered $2.5 million to the Sons of Confederate Veterans to take UNC’s Silent Sam statue off campus, then had five members of the Board of Governors misrepresent their involvement in the deal in a newspaper op-ed.
The Hannah-Jones decision also is an unmistakable reminder to students — especially Black students — that the University doesn’t seem to care what they think. Rather, UNC is as willing as ever to prioritize politics and profits at the expense of its students. As Clay Morris, a UNC junior, wrote for Poynter, the decision “clarifies that the University has no regard for its Black students, and that even being 20 times as good still isn’t good enough.”
Actions speak louder than words, always — and UNC cannot claim to value diversity and inclusion while simultaneously denying a Black woman her tenure. But this issue is larger than just Nikole Hannah-Jones. The Washington Post reported that, as of 2019, just eight of 622 tenured full professors at UNC were Black women. It’s a reminder that UNC has much work to do to live up to the ideals of diversity.
Yes, this is about race — but it also is about politics. It’s about UNC’s history of entanglement with white supremacy, and the iron grip that conservative lawmakers have on higher learning.
Is UNC really willing to give in to any sign of conservative pushback? And if it is, what does that say about who is really in charge of higher education in this state? The ever-growing politicization of the entire UNC System should be concerning to everyone, regardless of partisan beliefs or affiliation.
How can students — or the public — have confidence in an institution that constantly leaves them in the dark? Whatever happened to academic freedom? Shared governance? The marketplace of ideas? How can UNC consider itself a bastion of higher learning when some ideas seem to be deemed less acceptable than others?
Students deserve better. They deserve transparency from their university, especially when UNC is making decisions that affect them. If UNC wants to earn back the trust of its students, it has to start being more open.
This story was originally published May 31, 2021 at 8:48 AM with the headline "Hannah-Jones a reminder of UNC’s trust issues."
