North Carolina Policy Watch reports that the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees will have a public vote Wednesday on whether to give tenure to 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones along with a distinguished professorship in journalism, as she was originally promised.

Conservative critics of the project — prominently including UNC alumnus Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman Jr. — opposed the hiring of Hannah-Jones. Hussman denies exerting pressure. He said he merely expressed a negative opinion about hiring Hanah-Jones to the dean of the journalism school named for him after he promised a $25 million gift. Hussman also expressed surprise his communications to the dean and others at UNC, a public university, were released under that state’s open records law.

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Hannah-Jones has been offered a five-year contract, with a future possibility of tenure. She has said she won’t take the job unless it comes with tenure and that suggests the possibility of legal action.

The Board is comprised of political appointees who tilt conservative. Their unwillingness to grant tenure set off the controversy in the first place.

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For your amusement, a Twitter thread from a long-time UNC commenter who thinks the Board will pay Hannah-Jones handsomely to go away rather than infuriate Hussman and other fatcats by giving her a tenured faculty position.

 

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