1619 Project founder blames racism, conservatives for tenure controversy

On CBS’s This Morning show, 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones painted a picture of victimhood after the University of North Carolina (UNC) agreed to grant her tenure, after initially denying her tenure in May.

She told host Gayle King that not only she declined the “offer of tenure,” but will work at historical black college Howard University in Washington, D.C. Hannah-Jones claimed that since the 1980s, the Knight chair position that she applied for “came with tenure” and are “designed for professional journalists who’ve been working in the field to come into academia.” She also played the race card and claimed, “Every other chair before me, who also happened to be white, received that position with tenure.”

Hannah-Jones championed the unanimous approval of faculty as a reason why she should have received tenure in the first place. She said she took the offer to work at Howard University over her alma mater UNC after it “became a national scandal.” “It was embarrassing to be the first person denied tenure,” Hannah-Jones admitted.

She told King that she never received an answer about why she did not receive tenure and no one asked her for more information about her credentials, which came under fire by conservative critics. She blamed “conservatives who don’t like the work that I’ve done,” “political opposition,” and “discriminatory views against my viewpoints and I believe, my race and my gender” for not receiving tenure earlier.

It was ironic that Hannah-Jones said politics had no place in the tenure process, considering that the majority of academia are politically-liberal or left-wing. She asserted, “Every person … should be judged by the quality of their work.”

She also excused several revisions to her 1619 Project by the New York Times and said, “I think academia and in journalism, we should clarify as necessary.”

Accuracy in Academia has documented the many errors contained in the 1619 Project, which errors received scant attention in the mainstream media.

CBS failed to push back against Hannah-Jones’ narrative about her professional credentials, such as lacking significant published articles or pieces for over a year. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Hannah-Jones has not written a published piece for the New York Times in over three-hundred days.

Instead, CBS accepted her story hook, line, and sinker.

Hannah-Jones played the victim, and ended up getting tenure at Howard University without facing accountability for the mistake-ridden 1619 Project. This controversy highlights the antiquated higher education system and the deeply-embedded left-wing activism within academia, which has become an echo chamber unaccountable to the masses.

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