The rights and wrongs of Nikole Hannah-Jones

The Spectator ^ | 6 July 2021 | Dominic Green

[Rummyfan]

Congratulations to Nikole Hannah-Jones for parlaying the intellectual imposture of the 1619 Project into a job for life. Hannah-Jones has been hired by Howard University as a professor in Race & Journalism. Both of these fields are rife with dubious standards and historic embarrassments, so she should fit right in.

There are those on the pipe-smoking right who object to allowing a mountebank like Hannah-Jones onto the verdant lawns and into the stinky precincts of the institutions of what used to be the higher learning. They protest about academic standards, as if they still exist. They cite the history professors whose criticisms of the 1619 Project obliged Hannah-Jones not just to reduce her hyperbolic claims about the sinful conception of the American republic, but to deny that she had ever expressed them at all – an exercise in airbrushing that goes against the principles of Race & Journalism, should they be found to exist.

The grumblers are wrong. The Hussman School of Journalism & Media at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill was wrong, too, when it initially denied Hannah-Jones tenure in addition to a lucrative five-year contract. It attempted to right that wrong through the further wrong of surrendering to mob protests by then offering Hannah-Jones tenure, but she was right to say the first wrong was more wrong than the second wrong. Right?

She was right because she understood her value. It is an iron law of business that you should never interrupt a customer who is in the middle of paying over the odds. Journalism is still a business, just about. Race is most definitely a business. And so is selling six-figure degrees in journalism.

[Rummyfan]

Such a great takedown.

[sauropod]

.

[ealgeone]

If the historically black parents of historically black Howard University students want to burn their historically black life savings on completely worthless degrees in Race & Journalism, let them.

Problem with this is Korporate Amerika has bought into this nonsense as have the schools.

If you're white you've gotta get "right" and deny you're white.

Company I work for has specifically announced hiring quotas to redo the demographics of the organization.

If you're a white dude in the company you can kiss being ceo goodbye. Same for promotions going forward.