Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones rejected the tenure offer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She made the announcement Tuesday during an interview on CBS This Morning.
The UNC Board of Trustees initially voted not to offer Hannah-Jones tenure, sparking protests and accusations of racism on campus. The board met again last week and changed its mind, offering the journalist the appointment to tenure to be the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.
“It’s a very difficult decision, not a decision I wanted to make,” she said Tuesday morning on the show. Instead, she said, she will take a similar position at Howard University in Washington D.C.
Hannah-Jones is best known for creating the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” which examined the role of slavery in American history.
In an open letter Tuesday morning, faculty members at UNC’s Hussman School of Journaliusm accused the university of racism.
“While disappointed, we are not surprised. We support Ms. Hannah-Jones’s choice. The appalling treatment of one of our nation’s most-decorated journalists by her own alma mater was humiliating, inappropriate, and unjust,” they wrote. “We will be frank: it was racist.”
“This was a position that, since the 1980s, came with tenure,” Hannah-Jones said on CBS. “Every other chair before me, who also happened to be white, received that position with tenure.”
“To be denied it and to only have that vote occur on the last possible day, at the last possible moment, after threat of legal action, after weeks of protest, after it became a national scandal, it’s just not something that I want anymore,” she said.
Here is my full statement about my decision to decline tenure at UNC Chapel Hill and instead accept the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Reporting at @HowardU. https://t.co/SDs9nJEB27
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 6, 2021
At Howard, Hannah-Jones will become the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism, a new tenured position at the historically Black university.
She will found the new Center for Journalism and Democracy at the school, “which will focus on training and supporting aspiring journalists in acquiring the investigative skills and historical and analytical expertise needed to cover the crisis our democracy is facing,” according to Howard University.
Noted author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates will join Hannah-Jones on the faculty at Howard this year.
“It is my pleasure to welcome to Howard two of today’s most respected and influential journalists,” Howard University President Wayne Frederick said in a statement released Tuesday.
“At such a critical time for race relations in our country, it is vital that we understand the role of journalism in steering our national conversation and social progress. Not only must our newsrooms reflect the communities where they are reporting, but we need to infuse the profession with diverse talent. We are thrilled that they will bring their insights and research to what is already a world-class, highly accomplished team of professors,” Frederick said.
❝Of course, I’m disappointed that @nhannahjones will not be joining the school this summer. But I’m also aware it’s been a long six months for her and for our #UNC students.❞ —@DeanSusanKing Full statement: https://t.co/ZRkGqCWTVu pic.twitter.com/XOfX2wdPNJ
— UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media (@UNCHussman) July 6, 2021
After the announcement, UNC journalism school Dean Susan King, said, “Of course, I’m disappointed that Nikole Hannah-Jones will not be joining the school this summer. But I’m also aware it’s been a long six months for her and for our UNC students.”
King, and the rest of the journalism school faculty, had supported Hannah-Jones for tenure at the university.
“Hannah-Jones is an alum of our school and a loyal Tar Heel. We will call on her to continue to challenge and inspire our students from her new position. We wish her nothing but deep success and the hope that UNC can learn from this long tenure drama about how we must change as a community of scholars in order to grow as a campus that lives by its stated values of being a diverse and welcoming place for all,” King said in a statement Tuesday.
Hannah-Jones thanked King and the faculty at the journalism school.
“The only bright light has been all of the people who spoke up and fought back against the dangerous attack on academic freedom that sought to punish me for the nature of my work, attacks that Black and marginalized faculty face all across the country,” she said in a statement released by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The journalism school is named for Walter Hussman, who donated $25 million to the school.
Hussman opposed hiring Hannah-Jones, according to NC Policy Watch.
“I cannot imagine working at and advancing a school named for a man who lobbied against me, who used his wealth to influence the hires and ideology of the journalism school, who ignored my 20 years of journalism experience, all of my credentials, all of my work, because he believed that a project that centered Black Americans equaled the denigration of white Americans,” Hannha-Jones said.
“How could I believe I’d be able to exert academic freedom with the school’s largest donor so willing to disparage me publicly and attempt to pull the strings behind the scenes? Why would I want to teach at a university whose top leadership chose to remain silent, to refuse transparency, to fail to publicly advocate that I be treated like every other Knight Chair before me?” she said.
