Howard University, an historically black college, is gaining two superstar faculty members this year, both winners of MacArthur Fellowships and established journalists in their fields.
One is Nikole Hannah-Jones, who is an expert on Critical Race Theory and won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the New York Times's 1619 Project -- and yet was originally denied tenure by the board of the University of North Carolina, despite being enthusiastically recommended by her department's faculty.
The other is Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer who is perhaps best known as an essayist for his 2014 article, "The Case for Reparations," in The Atlantic and his bestselling book "Between the World and Me," a letter to his son about growing up as a Black man in America.
Their positions are funded by $20 million in grants from the MacArthur, Knight, and Ford Foundations.
They'll be in different departments -- Coates in the College of Arts & Sciences and Hannah-Jones in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, where she will be the first Knight Chair in Race and Reporting. She'll also be a founder of the Center for Journalism and Democracy, training Black journalists in journalism and investigative journalism skills.
It's hard to see how Hannah-Jones -- or anyone else -- could pass up the chance to be an "inaugural chair" (the Knight chair) and a founder of a journalism center in a University that won't game her about her race. Having been denied tenure at UNC, and then weeks later offered tenure in a turnabout by UNC, she was facing a career with unpredictable slights and stumbling blocks from the plethora of conservatives in the former Confederate state.
New faculty members with genius grants, Pulitzers, and bestsellers will bring Howard University a stronger academic reputation than ever before.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nikole-hannah-jones-declines-unc-s-tenure-offer-position-howard-n1273116?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nikole-hannah-jones-unc-tenure-howard-university_n_60e35e85e4b094dd268ebb3f
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