Nikole Hannah-Jones, the infamous “Project 1619” author and New York Times reporter, recently bullied her way into a tenured journalism position at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. Hannah-Jones has received this position despite months of controversy surrounding her anti-American revisionist project, which has further divided the nation.
Recently, the UNC Board of Trustees voted in favor of giving Hannah-Jones tenure. After the 9-4 vote, Jones’s tenure at the Hussman School of Journalism and media the next day.
Originally, the university announced that Hannah-Hones would be assume the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism position at the Hussman school. This position normally is accompanied with tenure, but UNC opted to provide Hannah-Jones with a five-year contract instead, noting that significant backlash from various conservative groups had erupted in response to her receiving tenure after she published “Project 1619.”
Hannah-Jones, however, became enraged by the tenure-less contract and immediately threatened to sue UNC on grounds of racial discrimination. In addition, various protests emerged across UNC while dozens of faculty members in the Hussman School signed a statement that cited the decision to deny tenure to Hannah-Jones as a major “failure.”
In response to the backlash, the university attempted to methodically mitigate the worst outcomes of the controversy. However, Hannah-Jones proclaimed through her lawyers that she refused to accept any offer that did not include tenure.
Fearing major public backlash and additional controversy, the Board of Trustees buckled under pressure and gave Hannah-Jones tenure. Trustee Gene Davis, who voted in favor of giving Hannah-Jones tenure, claimed that the vote “reaffirms that the university puts its highest values first.”
Protestors who had been in attendance at the meeting broke out into laughter.
“Project 1619,” which was initiated by Hannah-Jones, is one component of the New York Times’ sustained effort to rewrite American history. A principal thesis of this project is claiming that the United States was founded on slavery, not liberty.
Specifically, the project claims that the driving motivation behind the colonists’ fight in the American Revolution was not for independence from Great Britain; on the contrary, “Project 1619” adherents claim that the colonists fought for the right to keep slaves.
Historical facts reveal such claims to be absurd, given that the British themselves continued the practice of slavery until 1833, or nearly 60 years after the American Revolution. For this reason, “Project 1619” has encountered significant criticism from individuals on the left and right. Five prominent historians also wrote a letter to the New York Times in December 2019, requesting for the facts to supplant the fiction.
Walter Hussman, who is the namesake of the journalism school at UNC, informed The Daily Tar Hell that he had major concerns about Hannah-Jones’s ideology, including the fact that the “1619 Project” challenged his “core values.”
Hussman wryly remarked that he didn’t “think the public wants journalists to tell them what they should think about,” adding that the American public generally likes to review the facts and make appropriate determinations for themselves.
UNC named its journalism school for Hussman after he made a $25M donation to the university in 2019.