As Hussman School of Journalism and Media faculty, we are stunned at the failure to award tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize, Peabody, and MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” winner and UNC-Chapel Hill 2019 Distinguished Alumna recently inducted into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame. This was reported in NC Policy Watch.
Failure to tenure Nikole Hannah-Jones in her role as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism is a concerning departure from UNC’s traditional process and breaks precedent with previous tenured full professor appointments of Knight chairs in our school. This failure is especially disheartening because it occurred despite the support for Hannah-Jones’s appointment as a full professor with tenure by the Hussman Dean, Hussman faculty, and university. Hannah-Jones’s distinguished record of more than 20 years in journalism surpasses expectations for a tenured position as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.
The failure to offer Hannah-Jones tenure with her appointment as a Knight chair unfairly moves the goalposts and violates long-standing norms and established processes relating to tenure and promotion at UNC Chapel Hill. The two immediately preceding Knight chairs in our School received tenure upon appointment. The university counts among its ranks of tenured faculty many leading professionals with distinguished work in their fields. Indeed, one great strength of the Hussman School is that our students learn directly from people who spent decades in advertising, public relations, business, and journalism. The university and its leadership have routinely confirmed the outcome of the numerous faculty bodies entrusted to make decisions as to what is best for their students.
We demand explanations from the university’s leadership at all levels. Nikole Hannah-Jones does necessary and transformative work on America’s racial history. The national politicization of universities, journalism, and the social sciences undermines the integrity of and academic freedom within the whole University of North Carolina system.
The failure to tenure Hannah-Jones is especially disappointing given that just last year the university’s Board of Trustees unanimously endorsed “Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good,” UNC-Chapel Hill’s strategic plan. The plan calls on the university to “prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in teaching, research and service, and in hiring, evaluation, retention and promotion of under-represented faculty and staff.”
We call on the university’s leadership to reaffirm its commitment to the university, its faculty and time-honored norms and procedures, and its endorsed values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The university must tenure Nikole Hannah-Jones as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.
Signatories:
Deb Aikat, Associate Professor
Lucinda Austin, Assistant Professor
Andy Bechtel, Associate Professor
Lois Boynton, Associate Professor
Francesca Dillman Carpentier, W. Horace Carter Distinguished Professor
Julie Dixon, Professor of the Practice
Maria Leonora (Nori) Comello, Associate Professor
Paul Cuadros, Associate Professor
Patrick Davison, Professor
Deen Freelon, Associate Professor
Barbara Friedman, Associate Professor
Rhonda Gibson, Professor
Chad Heartwood, Associate Professor
Joe Bob Hester, Associate Professor
Heidi Hennink-Kaminski, Hugh Morton Distinguished Professor
Daniel Kreiss, Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Associate Professor
Allison Lazard, Associate Professor
Thomas Linden, Glaxo Wellcome Distinguished Professor of Medical Journalism
Trevy A. McDonald, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Julian W. Scheer Term Associate Professor
Shannon C. McGregor, Assistant Professor
Lee McGuigan, Assistant Professor
Dana McMahan, Professor of the Practice
Seth M. Noar, James Howard and Hallie McLean Parker Distinguished Professor
Terence Oliver, Walter Spearman Distinguished Professor
Tamara Rice, Adjunct Professor
John Robinson, Adjunct Coordinator, Stembler Professional in Residence
Laura Ruel, Associate Professor
Kate Sheppard, Associate Professor
Erin Siegal McIntyre, Assistant Professor
Lisa Servia Villamil, Assistant Professor
John Sweeney, Distinguished Professor
Ryan Thornburg, Associate Professor
Matt White, Adjunct Professor
In my 40+ years of academic experience, including many stints on tenure and promotion committees, I’ve learned that THE BIG THREE — Teaching, Research, & Service — are always the major criteria for the conferral of the sinecure of tenure. A national reputation is useful but not always REQUIRED; in fact, the “public intellectual” is not always perceived as an intellectual, particularly if the candidate writes for and to a non-academic audience.
Of course, I do not know the specifics of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s dossier and career, especially as it unfolded at UNC. But that is because the author and signatories above have only provided VAGUE (but impressive) encomiums to the professor. Whether she satisfies the SPECIFIC criteria of the UNC T&P documents is the issue at hand. If she meets THOSE requirements (books, juried articles, conference papers, etc.); pedagogy, and service to the field and community, then she SHOULD be awarded tenure (unless there are other mysterious forces at work). If she has NOT meant those stated standards, then no matter how impressive a record she may have outside academia, she may not TECHNICALLY AND LEGALLY be entitled to tenure.
In my field, Film Studies, I have seen several professors who had received multiple Academy Awards and Emmys denied tenure because they lacked academic credentials, although they were at the top of their games in the professional world.
As I understand it, Nikole Hannah-Jones has a masters degree but not a doctorate in her field. Could THAT be a factor, especially if it is common at UNC to have a terminal degree in one’s discipline to be awarded tenure? Since I do not have all the details — and, as usual on this site, was not given enough information to make a considered judgment on the situation, I will avoid a knee-jerk response of “racism!” or “1619 blowback!” to explain what happened.
There appear to be lots of wrinkles to this case, but in my experience if a prospective faculty member holds a terminal degree in their field — for example, an MFA in art — they are not expected to acquire a doctorate to be hired with or awarded tenure later. I know of two cases in which professional acquaintances were hired to tenure track positions (one at UNC, coincidentally….) while writing their dissertations, and did not receive tenure 6 years later because they had not completed their PhDs — but this was in a field in which a PhD was expected.
I am not familiar with the standards in journalism, but I know that expectations in performing arts are quite different from the expectations in, say, physics, and presumably in film studies as well. The fact that a job offer was proffered without any obvious expectation that the candidate would then pursue a doctorate suggests that the issue of a doctorate in not relevant here. And the judgment at every level and stage of the hiring process, from journalism school colleagues to the university administration, appears to be that she should have been offered tenure, so speculation on the “vague” encomiums is also not relevant: it’s not up to random commentors to make such a judgment when everyone at the university has already done so.
Barbara Piper is absolutely correct about the terminal degree, with the MFA being one of them. In journalism, however, an M.A. is not considered terminal. Tenure may occasionally be granted to someone who does not hold an earned doctorate but their other contributions to the field (books, conference papers, etc.) are usually adjudged to be world-class in nature. (My Walter Cronkite example above being one such exception.)
Delving into this situation a bit more, with most of the facts now clear, and bolstered by comments by a Black journalism scholar at Brown University who asked about her lack of a terminal degree, lack of a book published by a university press, teaching evaluations, and other criteria that are routinely used in tenure cases. He suggested that a 5-year trial period would be a good compromise and that UNC might grant tenure if she improved in some of those traditional academic areas.
Yes, MAYBE the UNC Board of Trustees was being political, but could it also be that the departmental committees and others who advocated for tenure were also being political, in that Hannah-Jones is the creator of the 1619 Project, which has been critiqued even by liberal historians as less than accurate and even “propaganda.” IF that is the case (and I’ve only read summaries of the Project, then that is clearly not an ideal for future journalists to follow. And Board of Trustees members might well be qualified to assess that, with the aid of some recent scholarly commentary on the pros and cons of her magnum opus.
Finally, if it matters, I had a look at the composition of the UNC Board of Trustees. Of those whose photos were present (most of the major officers), there appeared to be one Black person, a female attorney. The Student Rep may also be Black, but his photo was not on the web page. It is one thing to say (or ASSUME) that these people are racists; it is another to say that tenure criteria are stacked against minority candidates — or, of course, none of the above.
“their other contributions to the field (books, conference papers, etc.) are usually adjudged to be world-class in nature”
As I suggested earlier, the fact that Hannah-Jones was recommended for a tenured position by every level of the process within UNC, and considering that she has numerous awards — Pultizer, Polk, Peabody, MacArthur Fellowship, Hillman Prize for Reporting, the John Chancellor Award for Distinguished Journalism from Columbia University, etc, twice Journalist of the Year — I am a bit bewildered that Dr. Tomasulo imagines that she is not sufficiently qualified for tenure. She is a practitioner, and it is common for practitioners not to have the ‘scholarly’ credentials that academics possess, but nonetheless they are granted tenured positions at major universities in programs that train practitioners. (Every one of the creative writing faculty at my university lacks a PhD, which all of the literary theorists have, but they are all accomplished writers, for example.) And it is uncommon for Boards to overrule such recommendations — from the dean, provost and president — except for political reasons, though that is speculation. As I look at the other 21 recipients of the Knight chairs, it looks like only a few have PhDs (and in one case a JD), but they all have the same impressive journalist experience.
I’m sick and tired of people putting words in my mouth — or in anyone else’s except their own. I NEVER said that Hannah-Jones was not eligible for tenure. I only said that her accomplishments cited by everyone here (and probably at UNC) did not meet the USUAL basic requirements for tenure at most J-schools. I was chair of a large Communications Department with a Journalism component and we did not hire anyone who had not completed a Ph.D. (old-fashioned as that may be); tenure required a BOOK published by a university press, and TEACHING (which is not mentioned at all in reference to Hannah-Jones) had to be SUPERIOR in rating.
Furthermore, I’ve worked with many “practitioners” in the film, theater, broadcasting, and journalism fields. My dad-in-law was a Pulitzer Prize winner with a Master’s degree in Music and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy. He taught at several universities but only as an adjunct or guest professor. His reputation in the field was just a notch below Walter Cronkite’s: NEW YORK TIMES Chief Vietnam Correspondent; Head of the Editorial Board at NEWSDAY, a Pulitzer while writing for the old WORLD TELEGRAM & SUN, plus many other honors and encomiums. However, although I might make an exception in his case because of his non-academic achievements, if I was in charge, I would not grant him tenure.
I did not say that I would not grant tenure to Hannah-Jones and resent that misstatement. I always read the ENTIRE dossier of the candidate and did not rely on all the supporting faculty’s independent judgment. Fortunately, it’s not up to me.
However, I repeat: if the Board is ASSUMED to be political (without any explicit evidence, other than ASSUMPTIONS, then it could just as well be that the faculty and administrative support for Hannah-Jones is ALSO political, and either case would be a shame.
” I NEVER said that Hannah-Jones was not eligible for tenure. I only said that her accomplishments cited by everyone here (and probably at UNC) did not meet the USUAL basic requirements for tenure at most J-schools.”
Is this is distinction without a difference? The import of your comments does appear to me to be to suggest that the Board decision not to offer tenure to Hannah-Jones was reasonable and follows the “usual” practice. My response has been to ask if the whole of UNC, from her prospective department to the upper administration, knows less about the criteria for tenure in that unit at UNC than the Board — which is not an academic board — or than you, for that matter. Your personal experience — and mine — are not the key issues here, though it does appear to me that you are committing the fallacy of assuming that something you have not seen personally must not ever happen. Rather than looking at your own experience, it might be useful to look more broadly at the experiences of hundreds of universities around the country. For example, the Columbia School of Journalism — not exactly a second tier program — will bring in Robert Smith as a the tenured director of the Knight-Bagehot program: Smith has an MBA, no doctorate. Their new assistant prof, Daniel Alarcon, has an MFA and no doctorate, Nina Alvarez, another new assistant prof; nor apparently does Emily Bell, who holds an endowed chair. Even the Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, Steve Coll, has only a B.A I could go on, but hopefully the point the clear.
As for the politics, the media have reported that the UNC Board was heavily lobbied by conservative groups and individuals not to hire Hannah-Jones, and those media also report that the Board appears to have compromised on the issue by approving the hire but without tenure. To call that a political decision may be accurate, but it is also not a criticism: a Board faced with two unpopular options in this case may have tried to find a way to accomplish what UNC wanted — hiring Hannah-Jones — but nodding to a conservative public and state legislature by declining to approve tenure. Some might applaud the Solomonic solution.
“This failure is especially disheartening because it occurred despite the support for Hannah-Jones’s appointment as a full professor with tenure by the Hussman Dean, Hussman faculty, and university.” I’m not sure how to understand this — the President signed off but then the Board didn’t? External political interference? At what stage did the promotion get denied? This is profoundly disturbing and scary. It is certainly hard to imagine a journalist who has made a more important and necessary impact on American society than Nikole Hannah-Jones in the last decade. If the Board or external political actors were the reason for this, this is a very serious violation of the collective UNC faculty’s academic freedom.
I understand now that this was a new appointment. Is there any possibility of a campaign to reverse this? Can/would the UNC Faculty Senate make a statement about this being an unacceptable violation of the university’s autonomy in hiring decisions?
Yes, this was rejected at the Board approval level, which is highly irregular and it should be condemned. Hannah-Jones is being appointed to a faculty position that is a five-year renewable appointment, which is not tenured and therefore does not require Board approval. Of course, this is a disturbing attack on academic freedom and regardless of whether or not someone agrees with Hannah-Jones’ worthiness for the position, the Board of Trustees lacks both the qualifications and the knowledge to assess this, and that’s why we don’t let Trustees decide faculty appointments based on their political views or personal whims.
Maybe people will now understand my skepticism about the initial reports we often receive, reports that inflame passions unnecessarily. For instance, the initial report specifically states that Hannah-Jones was denied tenure. John K. Wilson now tells us that it was NOT a tenured position, where her lack of a doctorate might not be as significant.
Of course, I will still await further news before ASSUMING that politics or whim determined the Board’s decision in this case.
She was hired to a tenured position (tenure does not require a doctorate, nor should it). When the Board refused to grant tenure for apparently political reasons (since they never make academic judgments and have no qualifications to do so), she is being offered the position as a five-year appointment with the opportunity for renewal, but without tenure. So the reports are accurate.
Like most of us, I base my comments and ideas on the basis of my personal & professional, as well as any reading and other learning I’ve absorbed. In my experience, a doctorate IS required for tenure at most universities. I once asked at a prominent “J-school” what kind of credentials they would accept in lieu of a Ph.D. in Journalism and was told that “Walter Cronkite might get through.”
I am still troubled by words like “apparently” and other less-than-certain assertions that appear in so many “opinion pieces.”
Nonetheless, I thank John K. Wilson for the clarification.
Agreed.
Many times — at least in my experience — higher authorities overrule even unanimous pro or con decisions at lower levels. So, as stated above, I would not get “scared” or “disturbed” unless we learn all the facts.
I guess most of my colleagues on this site just want to react without knowing what happened. (BTW, why are we so often presented with a “spin” on the circumstances rather than all the facts. Perhaps UNC is not being forthcoming, but that is normal in personnel issues. This may have to go to court to find out why the Board denied tenure.
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