UNC Caves to Woke Mob, Offers 1619 Project Creator Tenure

By
The Wire
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Nikole-Hannah Jones, (pictured) creator of the NY Times' 1619 Project speaks with Henry Louis Gates Jr. inside the Smith Campus Center. Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

CHAPEL HILL – Did you really expect this to end any other way? After the last year of the Woke Wave, Summer Riots of 2020, open mob intimidation tactics, and then anti-racist corporate campaigns, the cultural inertia of this ‘conform or else’ ideology was simply too much for the leadership of the University of North Carolina to resist.

As such, they have folded to the pressure from loud Woke Warriors that were just appalled that an extremely political and unscrupulous “journalist” wouldn’t be offered a lifetime anointment at the UNC School of Journalism.

But it wasn’t a quiet event, as the Board of Trustees considered the vote protesters literally stormed into issue a final mob threat before law enforcement removed them. Then the board revered their prior (sober, considered, un-pressured) decision, voting 9-4 to give 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure.

The news was celebrated by the likes of of CNN:

“The board of trustees at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill voted Wednesday to grant tenure to award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones after facing backlash from Black students and faculty who said the board’s initial failure to do so reflected a history of systemic racism at the school.

The board’s 9-4 vote came after it met in a closed session for nearly three hours. When the board moved to a closed session, video surfaced on social media of law enforcement forcefully removing protesters from the meeting room.
Following the vote, board chair Richard Stevens said the board had “endured false claims” and was “called the most unpleasant names” in recent weeks.
“There have been those who have wrongly questioned this university’s commitment to academic freedom and open scholarly inquiry,” Stevens said. “We remain committed to being a light shining brightly on the hill. We embrace and endorse academic freedom, open and rigorous debate and scholarly inquiry, constructive disagreement.” […]”
And yet, constructive disagreement wasn’t really what happened here. In fact, all those unpleasant names the chair was called, the protests, and especially the fact the board literally changed its decision in response to that Woke temper tantrum of intimidation all belie the board’s purported commitment to constructive disagreement.
At this point, though, it’s par for the course. If anything UNC has made it their dedication to accommodating Woke Cultural Revolution that much more transparent for people to see.

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