Protests broke out at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill after the board of trustees doubled back on its decision to give tenure to prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Protestors, including several UNC faculty members, assembled at a board of trustees meeting on Thursday. Some chanted, “We will not be moved,” as they held up placards, clearly displaying their outrage over the college’s backpedaling.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media sought after Hannah-Jones for its Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. The professorship is a tenured position.
The college will instead offer Hannah-Jones a fixed five-year term. After five years, the board can review the decision for tenure.
However, Conservatives, who have been campaigning to have the project removed from classrooms, complained about UNC’s intention to grant the spot to Hannah-Jones.
And UNC folded.
Former President Donald Trump led the charge in the ongoing attacks on the project.
“Critical race theory, the 1619 Project and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together, will destroy our country,” he said last September.
Right-wing critics have labeled the “1619 Project” as propaganda.
The Pulitzer Center writes that The 1619 Project “challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation’s foundational date.”
But Conservatives continue to rally against a more accurate account of Black American history being taught in our classrooms. Their whitewashed history books will do just fine…
