Nikole Hannah-Jones tells UNC no thanks and social media responds with support, sadness

Five days after the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees granted tenure to journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur grant winner said no thanks to her graduate school alma mater.

Hannah-Jones is declining a position at the university’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media following a tenure controversy that escalated into a national debate. On July 1, UNC’s trustees voted 9-4 to grant Hannah-Jones tenure after it was not initially part of her five-year contract with the school.

The celebrated journalist will instead join Howard University as a Knight Chair in Race and Journalism, a position that comes with tenure, the famous HBCU said in a statement.

Hannah-Jones announced the move during an interview Tuesday with Gayle King on “CBS This Morning.” The response from UNC’s journalism school was a mix of support and disappointment.

On Twitter, Hannah-Jones said she would continue working to improve UNC’s treatment of Black faculty and students and that she would always be a Tar Heel.

According to reporting in the News & Observer, all previous Knight Chair appointments at UNC included tenure; Hannah-Jones’ contract was the first without it.

In a statement signed by 39 Hussman faculty members, UNC journalism professors called the university’s handling of the Hannah-Jones’ situation “humiliating, inappropriate and unjust.” They also called it racist.

UNC’s Black Caucus tweeted support for Hannah-Jones and called on the university to do more work to support Black faculty members and students.

UNC journalism professor Shannon McGregor apologized to Hannah-Jones on behalf of the school and vowed that faculty members would continue to push for equity.

One of the most widely-shared threads of the day has been from UNC journalism professor Deen Freelon laying out his reasons for staying at the university despite its handling of Hannah-Jones’ tenure issue.

In a tweet, Duke professor Mark Anthony Neal noted that most tenure deliberations for Black professors don’t attract the kind of outcry and advocacy that Hannah-Jones’ did.

Sonia Rao is a journalism student at UNC who tweeted disappointment at losing out on having Hannah-Jones as a teacher.

UNC Student Body President Lamar Richards congratulated Hannah-Jones and said activists at the school were fighting for more than tenure.

UNC alum and former Tar Heels football player Jake Lawler tweeted that his experience at Hussman led him away from journalism and said that Hannah-Jones will thrive at Howard.

Joe Killian, a journalist for NC Policy Watch released a Tweet thread comparing interviews with Hannah-Jones and Walter Hussman Jr., an Arkansas publisher and namesake donor of UNC’s journalism school.

In a tweet, the North Carolina Republican Party seemed to express its support of Hannah-Jones choosing not to teach at UNC. The state’s GOP account referenced criticism of Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project, which explores the impact and legacy of slavery in the history of America.

Joining Hannah-Jones at Howard is Ta-Nehisi Coates, also a MacArthur fellow and celebrated journalist. Nicole Tinson founded the HBCU job network HBCU 20X20 and praised the move as a win for HBCUs.

The conclusion of the tenure controversy at UNC led other prominent Black journalists to respond to Hannah-Jones decision, including PBS’ Yamiche Alcindor.

Other prominent national voices weighed in throughout the day, including veteran journalist Dan Rather, tweeting simply “Good” at Hannah-Jones declining to join UNC, to CNN’s W. Kamau Bell.

Hannah-Jones even came up in the White House press briefing Tuesday, with press secretary Jen Psaki saying the incident is evidence that systemic racism continues to impact American society.

Ava DuVernay, who directed “Selma” and the documentary “13th” about the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, tweeted support for Hannah-Jones joining Howard.

This story was originally published July 6, 2021 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Nikole Hannah-Jones tells UNC no thanks and social media responds with support, sadness."