UNC board FINALLY approves tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones

[StarfishSaver]

It shouldn't always be this hard to get what we work for and deserve. It's just exhausting.

Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill voted Wednesday to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, after weeks of controversy over why the university chose to hire the award-winning journalist as a professor without that level of job protection.

The board’s 9 to 4 vote in favor of tenure came after a lengthy closed-session meeting on the final day of the terms of several members of the board of trustees of the public university. It also came a day before Hannah-Jones had originally been set to start working for UNC.

The decision to award tenure to Hannah-Jones could defuse what had become an extraordinary showdown over the academic appointment and the degree of influence of politicians and donors in faculty affairs. A decision to deny tenure could have plunged Chapel Hill into deeper acrimony and infuriated faculty who see the case as a test of equity for Black women in academia.

Hannah-Jones is best known for conceiving the 1619 Project for the New York Times, an initiative to reexamine American history and the consequences of slavery from the year enslaved African people arrived in colonial Virginia.

Last year Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for the essay she wrote for the project. She has won numerous other professional honors, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. She holds a master’s degree from the UNC journalism school and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/30/hannah-jones-unc-tenure-vote/

[StarfishSaver]

1. ...

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[erronis]

8. Walter Hussman - rich white guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Hussman%2C_Jr.#Controversies

Controversies

Walter Hussman lobbied the board of trustees at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill against offering tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Black journalist who developed The 1619 Project.[11]

While Hussman advocated against tenure for Hannah-Jones, he appeared on Tucker Carlson's show expressing his opposition to the project, which Hannah-Jones created in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans arriving in colonial Virginia.[12]

After its initial refusal, the UNC board of trustees reversed its decision and voted to grant tenure to Hannah-Jones.[13]

[mcar]

2. About damn time

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. K&R. I hope she is well-supported.

[StarfishSaver]

4. She's just moving up to the next stage of the battle

It never ends

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. Truly, it does not.

[11 Bravo]

6. I sent them a letter stating that I would not renew my Alumni Association ...

membership until Ms. Hannah-Jones received full tenure. I doubt that was a deciding factor in their deliberations, but hey ... I did my bit.
(Of course, now I've got to write the damned check.)

[StarfishSaver]

7. Good for you!

[Red Mountain]

9. So....Walter Hussman

he seems to be on the wrong side of things.