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Statement on BOT’s Decision Regarding Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Appointment
As members of the faculty of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, we write to express our alarm about the recent denial of tenure of Nikole Hannah-Jones for an endowed Knight professorship at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Should the UNC Board of Trustees’ decision stand, it has implications that extend far beyond the facts of this case. We address three of those issues below.
Our first concern is about shared governance and the belief in the integrity and professionalism of the process that allows us to recruit, hire, and retain world-class scholars, researchers, and writers. The denial of tenure of Nikole Hannah-Jones has already drawn world-wide scrutiny about the fairness of that process. So far that scrutiny has played itself out in the press and on social media platforms. Of course, damage to and loss of reputation devastates people—but such damage also does incalculable harm to institutions. Decades of work to distinguish North Carolina’s extraordinary education system has been thrown into question as people pass judgment about professional decisions being made for political reasons. With public scrutiny comes the risk of formal sanctioning of the University by professional organizations such as the American Association of University Professors—as well as by the agencies that accredit UNC Chapel Hill—for “substantial noncompliance with standards of academic shared governance” (AAUP Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities).

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