Walter Hussman Jr.’s campaign against New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones ended up working after all. Days after the University of North Carolina trustees finally stood up to Hussman and voted to grant Hannah-Jones tenure, the Pulitzer Prize winner has announced that she’s accepting a tenured position at Howard University instead.
In an interview with NC Policy Watch, Hannah-Jones said that even though large swaths of the UNC community were in her corner, she ultimately decided not to accept the offer because of a lack of courage on the part of the top leadership.
“The faculty, the student body, alums — were trying to do right by me,” Hannah-Jones told Joe Killian. “I know the university is caught up in a political system that it doesn’t desire.” But, she added, “Had there been some political courage on behalf of the leadership of the university, that also could have made my decision different.”
Hannah-Jones is also the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant. According to an announcement by the MacArthur Foundation, Hannah-Jones and another highly regarded Black journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, will join the Howard faculty — Hannah-Jones as a tenured professor at the Cathy Hughes School of Community, where she will fill the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism, Coates as a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Hannah-Jones will also found the Center for Journalism and Democracy.
Hussman, a major UNC donor and the publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, objected to the Times’ 1619 Project, which Hannah-Jones conceived of and wrote the lead essay for. The collection of essays, a reimagining of American history with slavery at its center, has been targeted by right-wing critics and led to Donald Trump’s formation of the widely mocked 1776 Commission, dismantled by Joe Biden as soon as he became president.
Hannah-Jones and Coates are among our finest journalists, and their work has been crucial to understanding issues such as the lasting legacy of slavery, reparations and the effect of redlining on the wealth disparities between Black and white households.
The pressures exerted by Hussman, as well as the cowardice shown by the UNC trustees and administration, show why we still need institutions like Howard, the best known and most respected HBCU in the country.
Update: Hannah-Jones has released a remarkable statement.