RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article251727288.html

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones is considering legal action against UNC-Chapel Hill and its Board of Trustees over the failure to give her tenure, according to a letter to state lawmakers obtained by The News & Observer on Thursday.

The potential lawsuit comes as Hannah-Jones has sparked national controversy over the past week. Some think conservative politicians may be behind the effort not to grant her tenure as UNC’s Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

Outraged faculty, students, alumni, professional journalists and scholars have tied the decision to Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer-Prize winning work on The 1619 Project, which explores the legacy and history of Black Americans and slavery.

Hannah-Jones is set to join the UNC-CH faculty this summer with a five-year, fixed-term contract that does not include tenure, even though previous Knight Chairs in the journalism school have been tenured.

In a letter informing North Carolina lawmakers of their duty to preserve records related to Hannah-Jones’s hiring, the attorneys from the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., Levy Ratner PC, and Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter, P.A. said they are representing Hannah-Jones “in connection with the failure of the Board of Trustees (the “Board”) to consider and approve her application for tenure,” the letter says.

“We are evaluating all available legal recourse to fully vindicate Ms. Hannah-Jones’s rights, including possibly initiating a federal action against UNC, the Board, and/or affiliated entities and individuals,” the letter says.

Lawmakers have a “legal duty to maintain, preserve, retain, protect, and not destroy, alter or manipulate any and all documents and data, both electronic and hard copy,” relevant to Hannah-Jones’s potential claims, the letter said.

UNC-Chapel Hill also received a letter from attorneys representing Hannah-Jones, but leaders had no additional comment, according to Joel Curran, vice chancellor for university communications.

‘I am obligated to fight back’

Hannah-Jones retained legal counsel to “ensure the academic and journalistic freedom of Black writers is protected to the full extent of the law and to seek redress for the University of North Carolina’s adverse actions against me,” she said in an emailed statement to The News & Observer..

“I had no desire to bring turmoil or a political firestorm to the university that I love,” Hannah-Jones said, “but I am obligated to fight back against a wave of anti-democratic suppression that seeks to prohibit the free exchange of ideas, silence Black voices and chill free speech.”

Protecting the right to free expression is not only a cornerstone of democracy, but critical for Black Americans and other marginalized groups, she said.

“As a Black woman who has built a nearly two-decades long career in journalism, I believe Americans who research, study, and publish works that expose uncomfortable truths about the past and present manifestations of racism in our society should be able to follow these pursuits without risk to their civil and constitutional rights,” Hannah-Jones said.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said in a statement that the board’s action is “in lock step with the political, conservative and race-based backlash across the country that seeks to revise the truth of racism throughout our Nation’s history and to censor honest conversations about race in America.”

The group said that UNC-CH has “unlawfully discriminated against Hannah-Jones based on the content of her journalism and scholarship and because of her race” and it will fight to vindicate her rights.

Politics and UNC

The UNC System’s top governing body is in some ways viewed as an extension of North Carolina’s General Assembly. The Republican majority has stacked the board with 24 members, giving lawmakers some influence over the system. The state legislature appoints the members of the UNC System Board of Governors, which oversees the system’s 16 public universities, including UNC-Chapel Hill. The Board of Governors and state lawmakers also appoint members of the UNC-CH campus Board of Trustees, which approves tenure for faculty.

Republican Senate leader Phil Berger’s spokesperson Pat Ryan pushed back on the notion that the legislature has any influence in the UNC System.

“The legislature has no role in the faculty hiring decisions at UNC System schools, or the terms by which faculty are hired,” Ryan said in an emailed statement. “A short walk around the UNC-Chapel Hill campus should convince anybody that the Republican-led legislature doesn’t decide who teaches there.”

Hannah-Jones was a candidate for tenure in January, but the UNC campus board never voted on the matter. Trustee Chuck Duckett raised questions about Hannah-Jones, including her experience in the classroom, and asked to postpone the issue. About two months later, Hannah-Jones accepted the non-tenured position with a $180,000 annual salary.

Duckett said he has not received or read any letters from Hannah-Jones’s legal team as of Thursday afternoon.

This week, the board received an official re-submission for tenure and can now officially consider approving her appointment. Duckett said Thursday he has sent Hannah-Jones’s tenure dossier to his entire committee and is awaiting feedback.

In the letter, the lawyers ask that the representative and his or her office preserve all documents and data related to the following:

▪ the appointment of, and any other employment-related decisions and policies pertaining to, any Knight Chairs, past and present, at UNC Hussman generally;

▪ the Knight Chair appointment of Hannah-Jones;

▪ any and all tenure considerations, including any and all employment-related decisions and policies, from January 2011 until the present;

▪ the tenure consideration of Hannah-Jones;

▪ the potential employment of Hannah-Jones at UNC;

▪ any of Hannah-Jones’ journalistic work, including without limitation The 1619 Project.

▪ any correspondence with members of Board of Trustees, members of the Board of Governors, and representatives from the Knight Foundation from January 2020 until the present pertaining to Hannah-Jones, any of Hannah-Jones’ journalistic work, tenure and employment decisions generally, the Knight Foundation, and the composition of the Board of Trustees.

Support for Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project

Campus, state and national groups have defended Hannah-Jones and her work on The 1619 Project.

Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the project, which has been debated in national, state and local legislatures as an example of an educational program that teaches about systemic racism and slavery.

But it also has faced scrutiny from some historians and conservative politicians and led to a clarification from the New York Times.

This week, UNC-CH faculty demanded the board reconsider tenure for her. The UNC Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward also criticized the board’s failure to award tenure to Hannah-Jones and asked that a special meeting be called as soon as possible to review the matter.

In a symbolic statement, 1,619 UNC-CH alumni and students took out a two-page spread advertisement in The News & Observer supporting Hannah-Jones.

And more than 200 historians, professional athletes, writers and artists also wrote and signed a letter in The Root, calling out the board’s “failure of courage” to follow the tenure recommendation, saying it is almost certainly tied to the 1619 Project.

“We decry this rising tide of suppression and the threat to academic freedom that it embodies,” they wrote.