Nikole Hannah-Jones Declines UNC Tenured Position, Will Join Howard University

Nikole Hannah-Jones is taking her Black excellence to Howard University.

The Pultizer Prize-winning journalist appeared on “CBS This Morning” on Tuesday and announced her decision to decline a prestigious faculty position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, following weeks of controversy over tenure.

I’ve decided to decline the offer. I will not be teaching on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was a very difficult decision to make. And instead, I’m going to be the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University.

Nikole went on to share with Gayle King how the controversy surrounding the university giving her tenure (when no one else had been denied tenure before) basically left a bad taste in her mouth. 

And I went through the tenure process, and I received unanimous approval of the faculty to be granted tenure. And so to be denied it, and to have that vote happen on the last possible day, at the last possible moment, after the threat of legal action, after protests, after it became a national scandal — it’s just not something that I want anymore.

It’s not my job to heal the University of North Carolina. That’s the job of the people in power who created this situation in the first place.

Watch Gayle King’s interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones below.

Yes, Queen! Go where you are celebrated, not tolerated.

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