The University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill board of trustees’ decision to not vote on a recommendation of tenure for New York Times investigative reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones is a culmination of a decade-long project by conservative state lawmakers to exert greater control over the public university system.
Much of the controversy over the appointment of Hannah-Jones to a prestigious journalism teaching position hinges on her magnum opus, the seminal 1619 Project’s investigation of the legacies of chattel slavery. But the Republicans’ obsession with whitewashing history to frame a new battle in the culture wars and to mollify their own discomfort with the abomination that was America’s peculiar institution has the markings of a backlash that will further damage UNC’s tattered reputation.
The decision to deny tenure, for all practical purposes, without even putting trustees on the record with a vote is the latest and most egregious example of the rot that runs deep in a parallel conservative project to clear out viewpoints that don’t jibe with right-wing orthodoxy. After wiping out several academic centers, North Carolina Republicans have now launched an assault on tenure, one of the most sacrosanct features of life in academia.
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