Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones issued a statement explaining her decision not to accept the belated decision of the UNC board to offer her a tenured position and chair at the university’s school of journalism, whose faculty supported her. She instead accepted a tenured chair at Howard University. Hannah-Jones was represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Her essay is powerful. Please read it.
To those who say that racism is dead and gone, read it and think again.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow.
Only racists and white supremacists like Traitor Trump and his MAGA army (in the millions) of brainless minions say racism is dead.
Nikole Hannah-Jones should have been accepted on her merits, and eagerly. Instead, backstairs maneuvering ensured that the white-privileged status quo would remain largely unshaken. And the treatment of the student protestors!
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is not an especially admirable hero, but Hannah-Jones has essentially borrowed a leaf from his magnificent reply to the Roman citizens who banish him–his reply is: “I banish you!” Long may Hannah-Jones thrive at Howard.
Amen to that!
Ms. Hannah-Jones will get a fresh start at Howard. I can well understand why she feels she must move on. At UNC she would continue to be known as a “renegade and troublemaker.” She would be a target for the right. Perhaps Ms. Hannah-Jones would like to focus on her writing and teaching, not just the controversy surrounding CRT. She stands a much better chance of moving forward with current work at Howard.
UNC proved CRT.
It certainly illustrated systemic racism.
“ For too long, powerful people have expected the people they have mistreated and marginalized to sacrifice themselves to make things whole. The burden of working for racial justice is laid on the very people bearing the brunt of the injustice, and not the powerful people who maintain it. I say to you: I refuse.”
Thanks for posting the quote.
Yes, Callisto!!! So, so powerful!!! Thanks for pulling this quotation.
UnKochMyCampus.org reports that a VP at the Koch’s Cato Institute is running for Falls Church, Va., school board.
“Anti-CRT organization launching $1 m ad buy targeting NYC, Az. and Va.” (Yahoo Sport, 6-24–2021)
I hope the NEA will share with the public what it finds out about anti-CRT orgs.
Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute wants to be elected to the Falls Church, Va. school board. His wife is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. Sourcewatch describes the organization as right wing and anti-feminist. The site identifies the organization as funded by the Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundation and by the Koch’s. Paragraphs at Sourcewatch describe the organization as opposed to the Violence Against Women Act, in favor of eradicating the teaching of global warming, defending Rush Limbaugh, etc.
This has been quite the soap opera.
Probably not the best way to describe it. To me it implies that this “episode” or story line was overblown, but, apparently, Nikole Hannah-Jones would have been just as happy not to be cast in this role, too. I hope she finds peace and success in her tenure at Howard.
speduktr,
“To me it implies that this “episode” or story line was overblown”
Exactly – minimizing the powerful essay that was the subject of this post.
Thank you for thoughtfully responding.
The story is aptly described as one of heroes against all odds.
The villains, protected by years of privilege, are clear. They are the UNC board’s racists, Walter Hussman and their defenders, witting or unwitting, like the cloistered, elite white male scholars of legacy-admission Princeton.
The heroes are clear as well. They are Hannah-Jones, those who exposed the Board’s inappropriate actions, democracy’s FOIA and, the community and media who tenaciously fought for what was right.
The fact that it took the amount of time that it did to usher in fairness shows us all that entrenched colonialism is a systemic American problem.
Huh? Are you sure you understand what a soap opera is?
My thoughts exactly @FLERP!. I understand what you are talking about. There is no love lost between NYC G&T and SHS parents and NHJ. She’s all about self-promotion, so I suppose it’s par for the course.
“Self-promotion” doesn’t describe NHJ. It describes the grifting Trump family.
Beth, you and I can agree, NHJ is more American than Private Bone Spurs, DJT, Vlad’s puppet and the man who disparaged John McCain,
saying, “I prefer American soldiers who aren’t caught.”
G&T is gifted and talented, SHS is selective high schools.
Beth, I can’t understand what you are trying to say. Please translate your acronyms G&T and SHS.
“Beth, I can’t understand what you are trying to say. Please translate your acronyms G&T and SHS.”
Me, too!
G & T is gin and tonic.
Mark, speduktr and Linda,
“There is no love lost between NYC G&T and SHS parents and NHJ.”
NYC G&T means NYC gifted & talented, an absurd program that started under Bloomberg and tests 4 year olds to determine whether they exhibit an appropriate level of “giftedness” to receive a seat in a “g&t” Kindergarten program — with the Holy Grail being a seat in one of the “citywide” g&t programs where 4 year olds are guaranteed a seat through 8th grade (and in one case, through high school!) based on their 4 year old performance. Even Mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia wants to end it. (de Blasio has tried but the outcry was over the top and the parents in them tend to have a level of privilege that means their voices get heard).
SHS is sometimes “Stuyvesant High School” or just “specialized high schools” (of which Stuyvesant is one). That is a group of high schools mandated by the state to admit students entirely based on their performance on a single exam (the SHSAT) they take in October of 8th grade. The SHSAT exam isn’t designed to show proficiency — instead, the SHSAT stack ranks all the scores of the 28,000 8th graders who take it and once all the specialized high school seats are filled (around 5,000), the remaining students are all considered equally unqualified regardless of whether they received the 5,500th highest score or the 25,000th highest score.
In other words, the SHSAT is an exam not unlike some exams given in college to students aspiring to be engineers or doctors, where a professor comes in and says “when I give my final, the top 20% of you will pass and get As and the rest of you will fail.” Imagine the pressure that puts students under, because it doesn’t matter how well they know the material – if they don’t outscore 80% of the other students in the class, they fail.
The SHSAT is a very problematic way of admitting students to specialized high schools (“SHS”) so I’m guessing that NHJ may have expressed that opinion. But the truth is that there are parents and students at “SHS” who understand the problems with SHSAT-only admissions and don’t demonize NHJ.
NHJ wrote an interesting, important essay explaining her decision. There is something really off when people can’t even bother to address the content and instead try to simply shut down conversation with “She’s all about self-promotion, so I suppose it’s par for the course.” NHJ is not “all about self-promotion”. That is quite a nasty and demeaning characterization of her work.
Thank you, NYC public School parent.
I have indeed heard about this absurd fiasco in NYC. To me, the whole concept of “gifted and talented” is misguided. ALL students K-8 should have access to “gifted” curriculum without a qualifying test. To put it another way, hands-on “gifted” activities are simply good curriculum for every student in every subject! So many of the “gifted” activities I have observed in my 20 years are exactly the same activities we learned in basic teaching methods courses during my MEd. program in the 1990s. You can also find them in the science education literature of the 1960s “Sputnik Era”.
At the high school level, the fact that the interest in the curriculum at Stuyvesant and other SHSs is 5x what can be accommodated tells me that the NYC and the state are grossly negligent in their educational policies. WHY would you NOT offer more sections of these rigorous courses when students and parents demand them?
And THIS, readers, is reason #58 that reformers get a foot in the door.
Mark,
I agree that the solution to the debate about qualified admissions is not to replace a student who is best served by the advanced curriculum at places like Stuyvesant with a different student who is best served by the advanced curriculum at Stuyvesant. The solution is to provide seats for both. That is why I think arguing about how students are selected for the current number of seats is unproductive.
This debate is a proxy war about vague notions of fairness for people whose lives aren’t directly impacted by the outcome. Where would our minds wander if we weren’t discussing a handful of schools that seat a few thousand mostly poor and middle-class Asian students?
Teachingeconomist says:
“I agree that the solution to the debate about qualified admissions is not to replace a student who is best served by the advanced curriculum at places like Stuyvesant with a different student who is best served by the advanced curriculum at Stuyvesant.”
The solution is to provide seats for both. That is why I think arguing about how students are selected for the current number of seats is unproductive.”
I am not “arguing about how students are selected”. I am stating for a fact that SHSAT-only admissions does not even begin to come close to identifying all of the students who could handle and want the curriculum at specialized high schools.
I assume that you agree with me — and do not want to argue – since you specifically said that “The solution is to provide seats for both.”
What does that mean “to provide seats for both”? I have thought that a good idea might be a lottery to fill seats in which all students who could be served by being in a specialized high school would get a seat. Do you agree? There might not even need to be an SHSAT, since middle school grades and state test scores would already provide that information. Or perhaps for students who believe their middle school grades or test scores don’t reflect their motivation or ability, an SHSAT could be added and those students would have a 2nd chance to demonstrate that they should be added to the lottery group. But that SHSAT would not identify the “the 50 or 500 highest scoring students” – it would identify whatever number of students could handle the work, if they weren’t already in the lottery because their middle school grades and state test scores already put them in.
FLERP! says “Where would our minds wander…?”
You should ask Beth that question, since in a post about NHJ’s enlightening essay about why she rejected UNC’s belated tenure offer, she posted “There is no love lost between NYC G&T and SHS parents and NHJ. She’s all about self-promotion, so I suppose it’s par for the course.”
A number of people had no idea what that meant, and I provided context for that remark.
The only person whose mind “wandered” to NYC g&t and SHS was the person who agreed with your mystifying comment about soap operas. She seems to respect you, so perhaps she will read your comment which I assume was directed at her.
Nycpsp,
What I mean by providing seats for both is to increase the total number of seats so that every student who could benefit from the advanced curriculum that Stuyvesant offers has a seat. There would be no need to ration the seats.
G&T is a wonderful program for children who are capable of doing advanced work starting in Kindergarten. I believe that students who are doing above-level work in the public schools should be accommodated. I have no reservations about separate classrooms for G&T, because most often in the NYC GenEd classrooms the focus is on the lowest-performing students, while there seems to be little thought or concern into what the higher-performing students need.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s our detractors, like NYCPSP, who are absurd. Their criticism amounts to some combination of insecurity and sour grapes. “Nasty and demeaning” is the MO of our detractors, who “demonize” the G&T parents and children on a regular basis. Of course, detractors are morally superior to us “uppity” G&T parents.
With regard to the specialized high schools 30K students apply for roughly 5K seats. The NYC DOE is a bureaucratic disaster with a seemingly steady stream of administrative/clerical mistakes. The SHSAT is an efficient way of assigning these high school seats.
With regard to NHJ – 1.) My partner is a person of color, so I don’t need to look to someone like NHJ for insight into that experience. 2.) I’m sorry for NHJ if she has felt slighted over the course of her lifetime for being a person of color, but her stance against G&T and SHS is just spiteful. 3.) She claims that the G&T test in K determines the education a child gets in NYC. That is untrue. There are too few G&T students overall to make any claim that these students are getting anything better. If anything, they are just getting what they need. Yet, she has repeatedly lied and misrepresented the program. I don’t think that is responsible journalism.
Beth-
Given the nation’s history of prejudice, over-the-top criticism (self-promoter, liar) is appropriately viewed with a filter.
The comparisons about competing views related how best to use scarce resources should lead to vilification of the rich libertarians who plot to reduce spending for the common good, long before considering the action of throwing NHJ under the bus.
@Linda – I do agree with you to a point. For example, “Karen”- and “Boomer”- hating are a waste of time imo, when really the problem is the Michael Bloombergs of the world. That said, NHJ and her allies blame G&T and SHS for racial/class inequality, instead of concentrating on those who are truly to blame: the oligarchs. As long as she scapegoats our kids, she will draw our ire.
I have read many of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ articles. I have never seen any in which she “scapegoats our kids.”
“Every Knight Chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since the 1980s has entered that position as a full professor with tenure.”
Ding ding ding.
What a brilliant piece of writing, setting out clearly and convincingly why she made her decision.
Also, google “Knight Foundation” for an account of the newly endowed chair at Howard, the linking with other Historically Black Colleges, plus the history of the Foundation.
Thanks, Mark!
Aha! Finally we learn the full story. That all previous chair-holders were offered a tenured position just barely scrapes the surface. All we knew up until now was that Hannah-Jones was recommended enthusiastically for tenured position by the College of Journalism faculty/ admin and that the U board postponed final review. Forget the hundreds of posts in WaPo comment threads assuming/ surmising/ explaining that tenure is ‘automatic’ when soliciting star career professionals a position at professional-career-oriented colleges. Hannah-Jones in fact spent months in a tenure application/ review/ approval process whose only glitch was an unprecedented delay in vote at the board level.
Bethree-
The fact that you assumed the situation might be otherwise, implied by your statement, “all we knew up to now”, indicates a viewpoint you may want to examine.
:-Þ
Wow. Just wow.
Bless you, Ms. Hannah-Jones, for your body of work and for your commitment to training the next generation of journalists to carry it on.