NHJ UNC Open Letter

We, the undersigned, believe this country stands at a crucial moment that will define the democratic expression and exchange of ideas for our own and future generations. State institutions across the country are attempting to ban frank and rigorous conversation about our history in the classroom. Few single works have been threatened with more restrictions than the 1619 Project, a landmark exploration of America’s deep roots in enslavement. And now, the 1619 Project’s founder, Nikole Hannah-Jones, has had her appointment as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with tenure blocked by its Board of Trustees. Hannah-Jones’ accolades are numerous: three National Magazine awards, one Peabody award, two Polk awards, a Pulitzer and a MacArthur Fellowship. Hannah-Jones has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Society of American Historians. Because of her extraordinary achievements, the Hussman School recruited Hannah-Jones, one of the school’s most notable alumni, intending to appoint her a professor with tenure. Hannah-Jones underwent the university's rigorous tenure review process, which included enthusiastic support from the Hussman School faculty, her journalistic peers among them. The failure of courage on the part of the Board of Trustees to follow the recommendation of Hannah-Jones’ peers is almost certainly tied to Hannah-Jones’ creation of the 1619 Project. While the denial of tenure is egregious, it is not an isolated incident. The same anti-democratic thinking that blocked Hannah-Jones’ appointment at her alma mater has also fueled efforts in state and local legislatures to ban the teaching of histories of slavery and its legacies through the 1619 Project. We call on all people of conscience to decry this growing wave of repression and to encourage a recommitment to the free exchange of ideas in our schools, workplaces, legislatures, and communities. We are called to action by the example Hannah-Jones herself has set during her nearly twenty-year career as a journalist committed to shedding light on inequality and injustice through an examination of one of democracy’s fundamental building blocks, education. Writing first for outlets in Durham, North Carolina, and Portland, Oregon, Hannah-Jones joined the New York Times Magazine in 2015 as a staff reporter. Throughout her life, she has unflinchingly unearthed the blueprints of racism, its latticework of law, policy and custom, and how it undergirds our everyday lives. Her work is a call to conscience and a call to action for all Americans who remain committed to a democracy premised in unrestricted opportunity and unbridled attainment in public education for all. Thwarted in her school’s efforts to appoint Hannah-Jones as a fully tenured member of her faculty, Hussman School Dean Susan King announced in May 2021 that the appointment would be instead for a renewable five-year term. She explained: “Now one of the most respected investigative journalists in America will be working with our students on projects that will move their careers forward and ignite critically important conversations.” Still, as news of the Board’s deliberate inaction surfaced this past week, observers decried it. Dr. Jelani Cobb, historian and professor at Columbia University School of Journalism, urged during a television interview that we stand at a “real crossroads between academic freedom and freedom of the press.” There has to be “vocal and vociferous opposition from various quarters.” We agree. The threat to learning and the exchange of ideas persists, especially in places where it is proposed that the 1619 Project be taught in public schools. At risk right now are opportunities for thousands of students across the nation to think more deeply about the year 1619 and the defining role of slavery in U.S. history. Right wing critics, pundits, and politicians have launched a coordinated campaign to suppress this essential historical inquiry. Proposed bills such as South Dakota’s vague “act to prohibit the use of curricular materials that promote racial divisiveness” quickly appeared, but Arkansas’s HB1231 is more literally named, “To Prohibit the Use of Public School Funds to Teach the 1619 Project.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell singled out the 1619 Project in a scathing letter condemning the Biden administration’s proposal to teach about racism and slavery’s legacy in the nation’s public schools. But the threat of state suppression does not end with the 1619 Project. Todd Rokita, Indiana Attorney General, wrote to the Biden administration to argue that they shouldn’t be “imposing the deeply flawed and radical teachings of critical race theory into the classroom.” At least 19 other states’ attorneys general have signed it. Currently, eight states have pending bills that will limit teachers (and some state contractors) from teaching anti-racism or anti-sexism, most by banning classroom material and censoring discussion. Our right and our children’s right to learn is under siege. We decry this rising tide of suppression and the threat to academic freedom that it embodies. Some of us will call upon our university administrators, public school superintendents, principals, teachers, and faculty unions and senates to issue statements of support for the freedom of ideas in the classroom. Others of us will urge philanthropic foundations to look twice at state institutions that betray that freedom. The artists, performers, and speakers below may decline invitations from institutions that suppress free thought about racism and its historical roots. We will take our views with us to the ballot box and hold local, state and national politicians accountable to the free exchange of ideas and academic freedom. We, our children, young scholars, and our country deserve no less. We will cheer Nikole Hannah-Jones on when she steps into her classroom at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill this fall. But we will not turn away from the regrettable circumstances under which she will do so. The University’s Board of Trustees has failed to uphold the first order values of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. And too many lawmakers have wrongly deemed it their role to reach into classrooms and tell educators what to teach and how to teach it. Here, in 2021, we urge you and one another to resist. Signed (affiliations for identification purposes only), Ta-Nehisi Coates, Writer Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Peter V. & C. Vann Woodward Professor of History Emerita, Yale University Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History and the SNF Agora Institute, The Johns Hopkins University Matthew Frye Jacobson, Sterling Professor of American Studies and History, Yale University Stephen Kantrowitz, Plaenert-Bascom Professor of History, University of Wisconsin Crystal N. Feimster, Associate Professor, Department of African American Studies, Yale University Stephanie McCurry, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Columbia University Daphne Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Music, Yale University Manisha Sinha, Draper Chair in American History, University of Connecticut Deborah E. McDowell, Director, Carter Woodson Institute, Alice Griffin Professor of English, University of Virginia Stephen Hahn, Professor of History, New York University, President of the Southern Historical Association Tera Hunter, Edwards Professor of American History and African American Studies, Princeton University Adriane Lentz-Smith, Associate Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Duke University Andrew Horowitz, Assistant Professor of History, Tulane University Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy, Yale University David Blight, Sterling Professor of History and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University Noliwe Rooks, W. E. B. Du Bois Professor, Africana Studies, Cornell University Alia Hanna Habib, Literary Agent, The Gernert Company Eve L. Ewing, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice Barry Jenkins, Filmmaker Ryan Coogler, Filmmaker Black Thought, Artist Jesmyn Ward, Writer Calida Rawles, Artist Jelani Cobb, PhD, Columbia School of Journalism Jacqueline Goldsby, Professor of English and African American Studies, Chair Department of African American Studies, Yale University Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Julia Cherry Spruill Professor Emerita, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Robert Korstad, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and History, Duke University Jacqueline Woodson, Writer Tressie McMillan Cottom, Associate Professor and Senior Research Faculty at UNC Chapel Hill and MacArthur Fellow Lena Waithe, Writer Malinda Maynor Lowery, Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of the American South, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Brandon Terry, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and of Social Studies, Harvard University Matthew J. Countryman, Chair, Department of Afroamerican Studies, Associate Professor of Afroamerican Studies and History, University of Michigan Ava DuVernay, Filmmaker Anthea Butler, Interim Chair of Religious Studies, Associate Chair of Religion and African American Studies, University of Pennsylvania Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Associate Professor

Load more