Professors at UNC-Chapel Hill Demand Vote on Nikole Hannah-Jones Tenure Case
“I’m not sure any of us has seen the faculty more galvanized with emotion”
The left is deeply offended that 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones wasn’t offered tenure.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
‘A Breach of Trust’
Faculty leaders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pressed their Board of Trustees Monday to vote immediately on the tenure case of Nikole Hannah-Jones. Delaying the vote further would only sow more doubt in university processes and the board itself, professors said during an emergency meeting of the Faculty Council’s executive committee.
“We are not just an executive body, we are a representative body, and I don’t think any of us — even around the contentious issues that we’ve been through over the last couple of years — I’m not sure any of us has seen the faculty more galvanized with emotion,” said committee member Eric Muller, the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics at Chapel Hill. “I see no reason to hide the fact that we are outraged.”
Chapel Hill has indeed seen its share of controversies in recent years, including the university’s handling of the Silent Sam Confederate monument. Even among those incidents, the Hannah-Jones cases stands out for its implications for academic freedom: while Chapel Hill’s governing board does have the final say in who gets tenure there and who doesn’t, the board’s long-standing practice — as is common across higher education — is to accept faculty and administrative recommendations.
The board didn’t do that with Hannah-Jones, it was revealed last week. Instead, the board’s university affairs committee called for more time to review her tenure case, with the understanding that she’ll be reviewed again within five years. Since Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Foundation “genius” grantee, had the strong backing of the faculty, her dean and, reportedly, the administration, it is widely suspected that she’s been targeted for her reporting on race. Hannah-Jones is most known for her work on The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” which re-examines the role of race in the nation’s founding, and which has been criticized by detractors including former president Trump as being unpatriotic.
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“she’s been targeted for her reporting on race. Hannah-Jones is most known for her work on The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” which re-examines the role of race in the nation’s founding, and which has been criticized by detractors including former president Trump as being unpatriotic.”
Funny how this doesn’t mention that the 1619 project has also been criticized for being factually wrong. You’d think that would matter.
So effectively the faculty for this “university” seems to think that tenure should be decided on their “feels” and not whether or not the professor actually can demonstrate scholarship and academic rigor. Got it. Yes, kiddies, make sure you or your parents incur six figure debt for your “education”.
“Inside Higher Ed reports:”
Yeah. The website that continuously defended and provided aid and succor to Michael Bellesisles as his deliberate fraud inevitably crumbled around his ears, debunked by “non-professionals” who understood how research is actually done.
Maybe some folks should visit that website and each leave them a comment informing them that the vast majority of America thinks they’ve gone completely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
You can’t post comments at IHE any longer. I haven’t visited since they disabled them.
Then the trustees should vote NO and get it over with. The taxpayers deserve ultimate control over the institution they fund.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but didn’t NHJ’s signature work of “scholarship,” the 1619 project, fail peer review?
Asking for a friend, of course.
It massively failed “peer” review, but one must consider that historians at the university level are not Hannah-Jones peers. She lied, then tried to cover it up and then overextended her racism card to deflect legitimate criticism of her stupidity. If a faculty member did that, they would be discharged and canceled. I have no idea why legitimate faculty would support Hannah-Jones except out of sheer vacuous political grandstanding. She has never taught at the university level, and would be getting a free ride at the expense of tenure-track faculty who are putting in the sweat and toil to go through that arduous and arcane process.
UNC has really sunk to Harvard sewer levels of dishonesty, racism and bigotry. William F. Buckley’s words about the telephone book and the faculty ring even more saliently now that in the past.
I can only hope that the vocal faculty are the idiot wing of usual suspects. I’m hoping if they do go to this ridiculous vote that the faculty at large will be much more dismissive of this folly.
I doubt it, though. UNC has already taken quite a few hits over the years (like their fake degree AA studies program), so this would just be another shovel of dirt in the burial plot.
The faculty is enraged the Board didn’t act as a rubber stamp. And too often Boards do.
Some Boards are quite active and vocal trying to contain the wilder elements of their faculties, but those are few and far between. At one university where I was on clinical medical faculty, the Board stomped down some moronic proposals put forth by faculty, and then promptly forced most of the Dean’s staff out the door. The only time I ever saw a Board really crack down on faculty excesses personally.
She doesn’t have a phd. She’s never taught at the university level, if she’s ever taught at all. Her “scholarship” is bogus and wrong. Why on God’s green earth is she being considered for tenure? Idiot racist professors who demand she be given tenure are only banging more nails into the coffin that is tenure, an outdated, protectionist swamp of incompetence and shoddy scholarship. No comment on how bad the ‘teaching’ can be.
“which has been criticized by detractors including former president Trump as being ‘unpatriotic’.”
Unpatriotic?? How about just ‘Wrong’.