UNC journalism dean 'unfairly blamed trustees' for Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure ...

The dean of the journalism school at North Carolina at Chapel Hill agreed to offer Nikole Hannah-Jones a non-tenured position but later blamed trustees when media reports suggested that The 1619 Project creator was denied a permanent professorship over politics, newly released emails suggest. 

Susan King, who helms the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC’s flagship campus, was accused of casting blame on the Board of Trustees for the public relations firestorm over the Hannah-Jones tenure controversy. 

But new emails now show that in February, Hannah-Jones accepted an offer of a non-tenured position with the school that would pay her $180,000 per year over the course of a five-year contract.

The school says the emails prove that it was bureaucratic delays with the tenure application process rather than a top donor's opposition to the 1619 Project and critical race theory that prevented the matter from being resolved earlier. 

King made Hannah-Jones the offer of a non-tenured position after she was told by that the Board of Trustees would be 'reluctant' to offer tenure to someone who 'had not worked at university,' according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

The dean made the decision to tender an offer of a non-tenured position after a possible tenured position was brought up for discussion back in November.

But when one of the trustees, Chuck Duckett, expressed reservations about granting tenure to someone without a proper academic background and experience, King was deterred from pursuing it and instead tried a quicker 'workaround.' 

Even though she signed a contract for a non-tenured position with the school back in February, Hannah-Jones publicly spurned UNC-Chapel Hill on July 11 and accepted a tenured Knight Chair professorship at Howard University.

Hannah-Jones rejected UNC's offer even though the Board of Trustees voted to grant her a tenured position in late June. 

It appears that only once she threatened to leave the school entirely did the board then vote to grant the journalist tenure. 

The decision was portrayed in media reports as Hannah-Jones defiantly standing up to a board that was resisting granting her tenure due to the controversial nature of the 1619 Project, which has been accused of historical inaccuracies. 

Five days after Hannah-Jones announced she would be going to Howard, one of the trustees, Ralph Meekins, wrote a sternly worded email to King resentful of the fact that the media reports portrayed the board as bowing to pressure over the issue.

Meekins writes that the board would have voted to grant tenure earlier this year if the issue was brought up, but since King had already tendered an offer of a non-tenured position that Hannah-Jones accepted, the matter was put off. 

'Your continued failure to come forth with the truth on these issues and your continued use of your blog account and letters to others to blame me and the Board of Trustees for what has happened in this instance is disturbing,' Meekins wrote.

'You know, and we all know now, that you, the Knight Foundation, and Ms. Hannah-Jones entered into a contract in February, and never came back to the Board of Trustees to consider the tenure issue until this "uproar" that you helped to orchestrate. 

'Why are you continuing to blame the Board of Trustees for this delay? Why didn’t you bring it back to the Board of Trustees in March?' 

Meekins accuses King of allowing the board to take the blame and making it appear that Hannah-Jones was the victim of censorship even though the dean signed off on the offer of the non-tenured position.

In the email correspondence, King acknowledges her error.

'I was informed that no tenure packages would be reviewed in November and that they were postponed until January,' King wrote in an email to Meekins. 

King decided to offer Hannah-Jones a fixed contract in order to expedite her hiring since it would not require board approval - unlike the offer of a tenured position.

She said that because she wanted Hannah-Jones to begin teaching in January that she was moving on an expedited timeline.

That was a problem since she had planned for Hannah-Jones to be teaching classes the next semester. 

Controversy erupted, however, when it became clear that Hannah-Jones' position, which she accepted, would not be tenured while others who also bore the title of Knight Chair were tenured.  

 'I realize now that agreeing to the fixed term contract was a mistake - that it was a "workaround" that meant the board did not have to vote,' King wrote to Meekins dated July 17.

'Once it was discovered that such an agreement was a breach of university norms, questions and concerns were raised.' 

The Board of Trustees was first asked to consider a tenured position for Hannah-Jones back in January.

But Duckett asked the other board members to postpone the issue. Emails revealed by the News & Observer indicate that Hannah-Jones' lack of a background in academia was at the core of the problem.

'I and others on the committee have serious concerns over granting tenure to a person that has not taught before,' Duckett wrote in an email dated January 23. 

'We take granting tenure very seriously.'

Duckett proposed taking up the matter in March.

'Maybe another accommodation makes more sense for the university and the taxpayer?' he wrote in an email.

That other 'accommodation' was King's offer of a non-tenured position. 

King admits she made a mistake by going forward with the offer.

'I take full blame for moving forward a contract that made the Knight Chair a lesser position within the school,' she writes. 

'Like others, I wanted her to join our faculty and this agreement, presented by the leadership, seemed a bold move of support for her and the school. 

'I now can say it was not.' 

Duckett eventually voted in late June to give Hannah-Jones tenure. The decision passed by a 9-4 vote. 

'Most of the findings offered in the public records released today, July 30, related to Nikole Hannah-Jones’ tenure candidacy have been previously disclosed in news reports,' UNC-Chapel Hill's vice chancellor for communications, Joel Curran, said in a statement.

'The records correct the incorrect assertions suggesting the Board of Trustees chose not to take up her tenure decision in November.'

Curran added: 'The tenure application was not presented to the Board of Trustees in November 2020 because Provost [Bob] Blouin was in the process of completing his review of the application at that time.

'The timing of Provost Blouin’s review was conveyed to Dean King at that time.

'He completed his review before the end of 2020, and he submitted the application for inclusion on the agenda of the Board’s University Affairs Committee prior to its January 2021 meeting and was prepared to present it.

'Shortly before the meeting, the Chair of the University Affairs Committee (Duckett) elected not to include the application on the committee's agenda because he wanted more time to request and consider additional information.

'Upon learning of the postponement, Dean King expressed concern to Provost Blouin and Chancellor Guskiewicz that the University risked losing Ms. Hannah-Jones to another university where she reportedly had other pending opportunities.

'To alleviate that risk, the University negotiated a variable track appointment with Ms. Hannah-Jones to assure that Ms. Hannah-Jones would join the faculty of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media in July 2021 and that the school would be able to submit her application for tenure at a later date.

'Ms. Hannah-Jones accepted that appointment in February 2021.

'Neither the Chancellor nor the Provost stated or speculated how they believed the Board may or may not have voted had the Board been presented with and considered the tenure application in November 2020 or in January 2021.

'The Board ultimately called a special meeting on June 30, 2021, to consider Ms. Hannah-Jones’ tenure application, and it voted to extend her an unconditional offer of tenure.' 

Hundreds of emails have been released by the university over the decision. The emails show the extent to which there was a behind-the-scenes battle among the  Board of Trustees over whether Hannah-Jones should be given the role.

Central to their concerns was the fact Walter Hussman, who is a major donor to  the journalism school, had raised flags about the university being associated with the the 1619 Project, which had been described by some historians as 'inaccurate' and was derided by critics.

Hannah-Jones noted the influence of a 'powerful donor' to UNC, a reference to Hussman, who revealed that he had emailed university leaders calling The 1619 Project about the legacy of American slavery 'highly contentious and highly controversial' before the process was halted. 

The New York Times reporter won the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project which essentially 'reframed' American history to focus on when the first Africans arrived to Virginia as slaves. 

The project presented American history through a racial equity lens and helped mainstream the idea of critical race theory - a topic that has become a core Republican talking point. 

But the 2019 series of essays has come under withering criticism for portraying American history as fundamentally racist and also containing historical inaccuracies and generalizations.