Nikole Hannah-Jones foisted the toxic “1619 Project” upon America in 2019 via the New York Times. Now she’s heading to the University of North Carolina to further poison the minds of gullible college students. Not only that, she just received tenure from UNC, which means she can saturate the university with America-hating racism into perpetuity.

She also played hardball in order to get tenure. Last year UNC offered her a position as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism (what does that tell you?) at the Hussman School of Journalism. She was to begin on July 1.

However, as the NYT reported, “her appointment drew a swift backlash from conservatives” (the NYT didn’t identify them). As a result, the UNC Board of Trustees did not hold a vote on possible tenure. Instead they offered her a five-year contract, with opportunity for tenure review.

But UNC students, staff, alumni, and other academics were not pleased with the board of trustees for failing to offer Hannah-Jones tenure. Previous Knight Chairs, they said, held tenure, so Nikole Hannah-Jones deserved it, too.

Besides, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a major donor to UNC, wrote a letter and encouraged the board to “support the appointment of Ms. Hannah-Jones with full tenure privileges.” And money talks, doesn’t it?

Giphy.com. 

Then, on May 27, Nikole Hannah-Jones announced that she had retained legal counsel and just might sue UNC. Naturally she would be filing a discrimination lawsuit. On June 21 her legal team sent a letter to the board stating that Hannah-Jones would not join the faculty unless she received tenure. It was the whole enchilada or nothing.

So the board of trustees caved, and held a special meeting on Wednesday. The board voted 9 to 4 to offer full tenured professorship to Nikole Hannah-Jones.

She issued a statement, which reads in part:

“Today’s outcome and the actions of the past month are about more than just me. This fight is about ensuring the journalistic and academic freedom of Black writers, researchers, teachers, and students.”

Notice how she didn’t mention academic honesty.

Hannah-Jones also thanked the student protestors who showed up at the board meeting.

“I want to acknowledge the tremendous outpouring of support I have received from students, faculty, colleagues, and the general public over the last month – including the young people who showed up today at the Board of Trustees meeting, putting themselves at physical risk.”

Yeah, about those students. They’re members of the Black Student Movement, and 75 of them gathered inside the hotel ballroom where the UNC board would be meeting. But the board traditionally holds tenure proceedings in secret. The BSM kids didn’t like that much, and refused to leave.

And this is what happened:

These are the kids whom Nikole Hannah-Jones said put themselves “at physical risk.” I don’t see any of those protestors risking life and limb to support Hannah-Jones. Instead, I see brats who refused to respect the proceedings.

But Hannah-Jones wanted to hear from “the sisters” who were “shoved out of the room.”

If anyone has the names/contact for the sisters physically shoved out of this room, please DM to me. https://t.co/quOXzH1BfU

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) June 30, 2021

Besides, she said, that was the board’s fault. They should’ve told the students that tenure meetings are secret. Why, you can’t expect them just to leave when told! That confuses them, you see.

“It should have been communicated how this meeting would go, that tenure proceedings are always held in closed session, and an attempt made to de-escalate. Instead Black students were shoved and punched because they were confused about the process. This is not right.”

So just what sort of prize did UNC get with the permanent addition of Hannah Nikole-Jones to their faculty?

Well, the New York Times tells us that their correspondent for the New York Times Magazine is a “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.” She received it in 2020 for her introductory essay to the “1619 Project” that the Magazine published.

To me, that Pulitzer Prize is about as empty as Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize.

Scratch that. While Obama won his Nobel Prize simply for being Obama, Nikole Hannah-Jones received a Pulitzer for her malicious 1619 Project essay. The most outrageous of her claims is that American patriots fought the Revolution to preserve slavery, not for liberty.

Leslie M. Harris, professor of history at Northwestern University, also researches African-American history and slavery. Prior to the publication of the 1619 Project, a New York Times research editor asked her to fact-check parts of the project. Harris wrote in Politico that she strongly disagreed with Hannah-Jones.

 “I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.”

But the NYT published the 1619 Project, anyway.

Another historian, Allen C. Guelzo from Princeton, wrote:

“That no shred of evidence for this assertion exists did nothing to discourage the energy with which it was promoted in Hannah-Jones’ lead essay.”

“Major American historians—notably, my Princeton colleague Sean Wilentz and Gordon Wood, the dean of historians of the Revolution—rejected out of hand the notion that the Founders’ Revolution was executed in defense of slaveholding.”

Yet the University of North Carolina has found that Nikole Hannah-Jones, despite the many malignant lies she promotes in the 1619 Project, is worthy of tenure. She is not. But she will teach students to despise America and her history. And being young and impressionable, they will soak up her pernicious propaganda.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is a toxic woman who should never have received the honor of tenure at a major American university. Shame on UNC for caving to her demands. And especially for making the taxpayers of North Carolina pick up the tab.

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Featured image: Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo/flickr/cropped/CC BY 2.0.