The Blog

2021-

2021-05-22 g
NARRATIVE INTERRUPTUS (It was NOT discrimination.)

Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Denial Of UNC Tenure Is A Result Of Scholarly Malpractice, Not Viewpoint Discrimination

The New York Times’ champion of fake history, Nikole Hannah-Jones, was denied tenure in her new role as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill this summer.

Jones, who spearheaded the paper’s factually-challenged anti-American “1619 Project” seeking to recast America as an exceptionally racist empire built solely to oppress, was turned down tenure in the traditionally tenured role this week. Some groups decried the rejection as viewpoint discrimination and a result of “conservative” outrage.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) released a statement following Wednesday’s reporting Jones’ application for tenure was rejected.

“FIRE is investigating” the denial for tenure, the group wrote. “If it is accurate that this refusal was the result of viewpoint discrimination against Hannah-Jones, particularly based on political opposition to her appointment, this decision has disturbing implications for academic freedom.”

FIRE’s statement, as usual, is completely correct. An investigation is necessary,
and if the refusal to offer tenure was a result of viewpoint discrimination, then there
are indeed “disturbing implications for academic freedom.” https://t.co/r6BrXobTbm

— David French (@DavidAFrench) May 20, 2021

The real scandal is that Jones was hired to teach the next generation of journalists in the first place, let alone at a top-25 school for communication and journalism.

Jones had to correct her biggest story, a lead essay of the entire project, with a substantial admission the piece was historically inaccurate. Her essay sought to redefine the United States as an irredeemably racist empire whose true founding was marked by the arrival of the first slaves in 1619 instead of the colonies’ separation from Great Britain in 1776.

An “editor’s note” tacked onto the piece reads, “A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them,” emphasis ours.

The two-word change might seem small, but the implications are massive, undermining the entire project which seeks to vilify the early settlers as united in a common goal to perpetuate slavery, founding a new nation in the process built on absolute hypocrisy.

The paper’s concession fueled a wide array of academics at the National Association of Scholars — including liberal professors contrary to the narrative Jones’ detractors merely emanate from conservative circles as reported — to sign a letter in October which called on the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke its award given to Jones last year.

Jones’ lead essay for which she was given the honor, they wrote, “itself was false when written, making a large claim that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution, a claim for which there is simply no evidence.”

More than two dozen academics across elite institutions signed the letter.

“The duplicity of attempting to alter the historical record in a manner intended to deceive the public is as serious an infraction against professional ethics as a journalist can commit,” they added.

In September, the project was deceptively edited again to omit “true founding” from its description of 1619’s role in the United States, again undermining a core tenet of the project.

Jones’s denial of tenure isn’t based on viewpoint discrimination, rather, it’s scholarly incompetence. Historical inaccuracy aside, Jones’s cheerleading of the deadly left-wing riots to grip the country in last year’s summer of rage raises more red flags that her supposed scholarship is conducted in good faith. (read more)

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