Author of 1619 Project Rejects Tenure Offer at UNC, Takes New Position Elsewhere
The creator of the controversial 1619 Project is rejecting an offer of tenure at the University of North Carolina so that she can teach at a historically black college.
Howard University on Tuesday announced that Nikole Hannah-Jones is being hired as the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism.
The college also announced that Ta-Nehisi Coates, a strident supporter of reparations for slavery, has also joined the college’s faculty, according to a release from Howard.
“I am so incredibly honored to be joining one of the most important and storied educational institutions in our country and to work alongside the illustrious faculty of the Cathy Hughes School of Communications and the brilliant students it draws in,” Hannah-Jones said in the release.
“We are at a critical juncture in our democracy, and yet our press does not reflect the nation it serves and too often struggles to grasp the danger for our country as we see growing attacks on free speech and the fundamental right to vote,” Hannah-Jones said in the release.
“In the storied tradition of the Black press, the Center for Journalism and Democracy will help produce journalists capable of accurately and urgently covering the challenges of our democracy with a clarity, skepticism, rigor and historical dexterity that is too often missing from today’s journalism,” she said.
The decision was controversial.
Hannah-Jones’ historical falsifications would be enough to disqualify her for tenure. However, there is also the matter of her journalistic qualifications for the position of professor, which do not exist. #1619Projecthttps://t.co/m6oxSPdsqQ
— Niles Niemuth | WSWS.org (@niles_niemuth) July 2, 2021
Not to mention, it’s historically wrong.
There are LOTS facts #1619Project ignores:
1. Slavery existed before white/Europeans engaged in it.
2. AFRICANS captured/sold people into slavery.
3. Some slaves that arrived in 1619 were later FREED. So how was that “founding” the…
— Nobody_really (@Type_ur_name) July 6, 2021
When it comes to universities, I’ve become an accelerationist: let them expose themselves for the useless nonsense machines they are, and let employers stop using credentialism as a substitute for employee qualification. https://t.co/ksqM5cFYhd
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 1, 2021
Hannah-Jones, whose skewed view of history teaches that slavery is at the root of all American history and that the real story of America began with the arrival of slaves in the Virginia colony in 1619, had been involved in a controversial fight over granting her tenure at the University of North Carolina.
Hannah-Jones said the fact that she did not get tenure without a struggle impacted her decision to leave UNC.
It was a “very difficult decision,” Hannah-Jones said. “Not a decision I wanted to make.”
“Look what it took to get tenure. … This was a position that, since the 1980s, came with tenure,” she said, referring to her appointment as Knight Chair at UNC.
JUST IN: Award-winning journalist @nhannahjones reveals on @CBSThisMorning she has declined the University of North Carolina’s offer for tenure and will be the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Reporting at @HowardU. pic.twitter.com/w9j0gVe0cd
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) July 6, 2021
“Every other chair before me, who also happened to be white, received that position with tenure,” she said.
She said that after the decision to grant her tenure became “a national scandal” that came out in her favor, it was “just not something that I [wanted] anymore.”
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