Tenure decision for prize-winning journalist back in hands of UNC-Chapel Hill board

After days of protest and pressure, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Board of Trustees will consider tenure for a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is scheduled to start working at the university in July.

2021-05-26

When any decision will be made is uncertain, however.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a UNC-Chapel Hill alumna and a New York Times reporter, was hired in April as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the university's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She won the Pulitzer, a Peabody Award and a so-called "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for "The 1619 Project" about slavery's impact on America.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has funded numerous Knight Chair faculty positions nationwide, and they typically carry tenure. But Hannah-Jones was offered a five-year contract instead, at a salary of $180,000 a year.

“We can confirm that, on May 25, the Board of Trustees received the Appointments, Promotions and Tenure Committee’s request that the board consider the appointment of Nikole Hannah-Jones for a faculty position as a full professor with tenure in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The request was immediately referred to the board’s University Affairs Committee for their review and consideration,” Board Chairman Richard Stevens said in an email to WRAL News on Wednesday.

Stevens said last week that the board hadn't denied Hannah-Jones tenure. It merely didn't act on an earlier recommendation from the Hussman School because at least one board member had questions about her qualifications for a lifetime appointment.

The lack of tenure for the position put a national spotlight on UNC-Chapel Hill over the last week. People protested at the Board of Trustees meeting last week, and students, faculty and journalism organizations have expressed outrage over it.

The Faculty Executive Committee sent a letter to the board Monday, demanding that members "immediately" consider Hannah-Jones for tenure, calling the decision to delay it "a breach of trust."

In a nod toward Hannah-Jones' work, 1,619 UNC-Chapel Hill alumni took out a two-page ad in The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh on Wednesday to press for tenure for her.

"We are incredibly proud to be Tar Heels. We go out into the world and try to represent our university. When these actions taken by the Board of Trustees get the headlines, people get a certain image of the university that we want to counter," said Carmen Scott, co-founder of Proud UNC Alumni, the group that bought the ad.

Kristi Booker, another co-founder of the group, said she believes delaying tenure for Hannah-Jones is politically motivated because of her work.

"We saw this as retaliation of things she’s tried to do in her investigative reporting," Booker said. "As alumni, we feel like it’s our responsibility to continue to push the university to be a better place, to be a more inclusive place and to really live up to that proverbial name of being a light on the hill."

The group plans to donate extra money from the GoFundMe account used to raise funds for the newspaper ad to a journalism society Hannah-Jones founded.

Despite the Board of Trustees taking a look at tenure for Hannah-Jones, questions continue to swirl about whether she will teach at UNC-Chapel Hill at all.

Her Twitter bio used to include mention of her new appointment at the university, but that has been dropped in recent days. She has kept a low profile throughout the controversy and hasn't responded to several requests from WRAL News for comment.