The people of North Carolina dodged a bullet when the Trustees of the University of North Carolina acted to deny a grant of tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones at the University's Hussman School of Journalism and Media, leaving in place a five-year contract to teach there that the school had offered to recruit her.
The denial of tenure was first reported by NC Policy Watch:
As Policy Watch reported last week, UNC-Chapel Hill's Hussman School of Journalism and Media pursued Hannah-Jones for its Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a tenured professorship. But following political pressure from conservatives who object to her work on "The 1619 Project" for The New York Times Magazine, the school changed its plan to offer her tenure — which amounts to a career-long appointment. Instead, she will start July 1 for a fixed five-year term as Professor of the Practice, with the option of being reviewed for tenure at the end of that time period.
Hannah-Jones is being offered the opportunity to prove that she can be an effective classroom teacher before granting her a lifetime job doing something she has never done before. That seems a lot more reasonable than taking a flyer on a rookie in a lifetime job. It's not as if she is ruled out for tenure. By the way, she holds a master's degree from the Hussman School but lacks a doctorate, which raises questions about her capabilities as a scholarly researcher.
Her work on the 1619 Project raises issues of research competence as well, even though the progressive claque that wants to propagandize our young to hate this country seems to love it.