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In a surprise checkmate move, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones informed the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that she would not be accepting its delayed offer to join its journalism school, and would instead become a tenured professor at Howard University.
The announcement came after the school stumbled through an extended public controversy over Hannah-Jones’ hiring, and revelations that a conservative mega-donor to the journalism school, Walter Hussman, had worked behind the scenes to make sure the overqualified Jones wasn’t initially offered a tenured position, unlike her white predecessors at the school.
UNC’s journalism school was renamed the Hussman School of Journalism and Media in 2019, after the wealthy media magnate and publisher of the anti-Clinton Arkansas Democrat-Gazette committed to donating $25 million to UNC, although most of the money from the gift has not yet been given. The school had recruited Hannah-Jones, a MacArthur “genius” and the driving force behind the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” an ambitious journalistic reexamination of American history that focused on the central role slavery had in shaping the nation and its institutions.
