Nikole Hannah-Jones Considering Legal Action Against UNC Over tenure

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones is considering legal action against UNC-Chapel Hill

Photo: Nikole Hannah-Jones.com

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones is considering legal action against UNC-Chapel Hill and its Board of Trustees over the failure to give her tenure, according to a letter to state lawmakers obtained by The News & Observer on Thursday.

The potential lawsuit comes as Hannah-Jones has sparked national controversy over the past week. Some think conservative politicians may be behind the effort not to grant her tenure as UNC’s Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

Hannah-Jones is set to join the UNC-CH faculty this summer with a five-year, fixed-term contract that does not include tenure, even though previous Knight Chairs in the journalism school have been tenured.

In a letter informing North Carolina lawmakers of their duty to preserve records related to Hannah-Jones’s hiring, the attorneys from the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., Levy Ratner PC, and Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter, P.A. said they are representing Hannah-Jones “in connection with the failure of the Board of Trustees (the “Board”) to consider and approve her application for tenure,” the letter says.

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