UNC is talking with Nikole Hannah-Jones legal team as potential suit over tenure looms
UNC-Chapel Hill officials are talking with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s legal team about her employment at the university, following the threat of a federal discrimination lawsuit and a national controversy regarding the lack of tenure for her.
The university responded on Friday to a letter from the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. — which is representing Hannah-Jones — about her employment, Vice Chancellor for Communications Joel Curran said in a statement.
“We look forward to continued dialogue with her counsel,” Curran said.
That is all the information the university said it would share.
Hannah-Jones, who is a Black woman, is set to join the faculty at UNC-CH in July as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The UNC campus Board of Trustees has not offered Hannah-Jones tenure for that position, which previous Knight Chairs at UNC-CH have received.
Her attorneys threatened the lawsuit last week, saying UNC-CH “unlawfully discriminated against Hannah-Jones based on the content of her journalism and scholarship and because of her race.”
“We will fight to ensure that her rights are vindicated,” the NAACP LDF said in a statement.
They gave UNC-CH a Friday deadline to offer her tenure and outlined the case in a letter to UNC-CH officials, as reported by NC Policy Watch.
The trustees did not meet that deadline, but no lawsuit has been filed yet.
On Monday, the NAACP LDF said it did not have any further comments or information to share regarding Hannah-Jones’s employment or a lawsuit.
UNC facing potential discrimination lawsuit
The letter from attorneys to UNC-CH detailed Hannah-Jones’ qualifications and the precedent of granting tenure to Knight Chairs upon hire. It also offers a timeline of her tenure application that differs from what university officials have said, suggesting that the Board of Trustees’ involvement began last fall.
The trustees’ denial of tenure for Hannah-Jones was “the product of political and racially discriminatory backlash against her life’s work,” the letter said.
And the decision — or lack thereof — ”was motivated by a desire to suppress her research, writing and speech related to the history and legacy of American slavery and its continuing ramifications in entrenched racial inequalities and racial injustices in America, as exemplified by the 1619 Project,” the letter said.
The legal team — from the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., Levy Ratner PC, and Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter, P.A. — also notified North Carolina lawmakers that they were representing Hannah-Jones and asked that they preserve any records that may be related to this case.
In its only statement on this matter, the NAACP LDF said refusing to consider and vote on her tenure recommendation is “in lock step with the political, conservative and race-based backlash across the country that seeks to revise the truth of racism throughout our Nation’s history and to censor honest conversations about race in America.”
“To retaliate against truthtellers, like Ms. Hannah-Jones, for speaking honestly, accurately, and bravely about some of the most shameful and enduring acts of oppression in our country is one of the most dangerous forms of discrimination and repression in a democratic society,” the statement said.
The UNC-CH board could’ve met last week to discuss and vote on Hannah-Jones’s tenure appointment, because it received an official submission to review. However, the board never called a special meeting. Its next meeting is scheduled for July 14 and 15 in Chapel Hill, after Hannah-Jones is set to start her job.
Hannah-Jones joining the UNC faculty
Hannah-Jones was hired this spring as the Knight Chair, a position that is designed to bring successful industry professionals into academia and has historically come with tenure at Carolina. Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for The New York Times. During her nearly-20-year career, Hannah-Jones has won a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” a Peabody Award and a George Polk Award. She earned her master’s degree from UNC-CH in 2003.
Hannah-Jones is best known for her work on The 1619 Project, which explores the legacy and history of Black Americans and slavery. She led the project and won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020 for her essay in it.
The 1619 Project has faced scrutiny from some historians and conservative politicians and led to a clarification from The Times, though the paper stands by her work. More than 150 scholars and UNC-CH faculty have defended Hannah-Jones and her work. The project has also recently been debated in Congress and state legislatures as an example of an educational program that teaches about systemic racism and slavery.
The UNC journalism school’s namesake and top donor Walter Hussman Jr., expressed concerns about Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project to university officials, as first reported by The Assembly. Hussman told The News & Observer he was not trying to pressure anyone not to hire her or give her tenure and either decision would not affect his financial commitment to the school.
The concern is that Hannah-Jones’s involvement with The 1619 Project negatively affected her tenure candidacy and the board’s decision. If true, this illustrates the importance of academic freedom and why tenure protects faculty.
University leaders have maintained that the board never denied her tenure because they never voted on it.
Hannah-Jones was submitted with other tenure candidates for the January 2021 trustees meeting. Trustee Chuck Duckett, who chairs the committee that vets tenure candidates on behalf of the board, said he had questions about Hannah-Jones, including her teaching experience. He asked to postpone the matter to get answers, according to the university.
Instead, in March, Hannah-Jones was offered a fixed-term contract, with the option of being reviewed for tenure within five years. The announcement of her hiring was made in April.
Hannah-Jones is set to start her job on campus July 1.
This story was originally published June 7, 2021 at 3:50 PM with the headline "UNC is talking with Nikole Hannah-Jones legal team as potential suit over tenure looms."