Social Media Reacts to UNC Granting Tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones chapelboro.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from chapelboro.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
This column originally appeared in The News and Observer of Raleigh.
The uproar over Nikole Hannah-Jonesâ hiring at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill isnât only about the the Board of Trusteesâ concern about awarding tenure to a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the School of Journalism.
Itâs also about the long-term damage that Republican political meddling is doing to the universityâs ability to attract and keep faculty, UNC professors told me.
âThe general atmosphere of the past few years is certainly having a detrimental impact on our ability to retain faculty, especially non-white faculty,â said William Sturkey, an associate professor at UNC who specializes in the history of race in the American South.
Artists, Athletes, Educators Voice Support for Nikole Hannah-Jones Amid Issue of Tenure at UNC
Hundreds of artists, athletes and educators signed onto an open letter Tuesday morning, voicing solidarity with award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones following the news that UNC elected to postpone its review of her tenure application.
Hannah-Jones, who works for the New York Times, is set to return to her alma mater as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a professorship that typically includes tenure. The UNC Board of Trustees, however, elected to “take no action” on her tenure application, which has led to increasing community outrage. The discourse continued Tuesday, with 238 people writing support for Hannah-Jones in an opinion column for the Black-oriented magazine The Root.