UNC’s Nikole Hannah-Jones Controversy Demonstrates Sinister Power of Woke

CHAPEL HILL – It’s an emergency: The University of North Carolina didn’t offer tenure to a controversial paragon of Woke revisionism — just a five year contract and a prestigious title — and the Left is ironically crowing that it amounts to sacrilegious silencing of speech.

The UNC Board of Trustees has called an emergency meeting Monday, after blow back for not crowning 1619 Project author, New York Times writer, and UNC alum Nikole Hannah-Jones as a ‘paid for life’ Queen of the Hussman School of Journalism reached a fever pitch.

The gall and audacity required for the Woke Left, especially those at UNC, to cry about a ‘chilling effect’ and to summon a Mob to then demand elevation of their idol or else, is mind blowing marker of psychopathy.  It comes after years of their own canceling, smearing, de-platforming, doxxing, assaulting, and erasing of any organization, person or idea opposed to their agenda and ideology.

It’s worth reiterating that this reaction comes with Hannah-Jones getting a $180,000/yr low burden, high prestige teaching post for a five year guaranteed contract, but not tenure. What would ensue should she have been denied a position at altogether?

After all, while Hannah-Jones’ credibility may be elevated among the Woke, who constantly exalt her with descriptors of ‘acclaimed journalist’ and Pulitzer Prize winner and a ‘Genius’, that respect is hardly widespread among all in journalism or, especially, history. A great many journalists and historians regard her work as suspect, at least, and not really journalism or history at all to some. She’s been criticized for misrepresenting history on purpose, and admits herself that it is more about framing a narrative than accurately presenting history.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is an activist, pure and simple. The UNC Board of Trustees was right to at least pause in offering tenure on account of her Woke influence and activism alone. It remains to be seen if, within a university sporting a strong track record of social justice fealty and associated tumult, if the board will be able to resist the Mob.

Moreover, the push back on the push back here shows how precious the deification of Woke idols really is to the Woke movement. The ‘fundamental transformation of the United States of America’ cannot be achieved without Woke Oracles in the highest positions of influence, because that is what is necessary to establish their ‘authoritative truth.’

As such, any resistance to accepting these idols, any questioning of the dogma, is treated as blasphemy and simultaneously presented as evidence of White Supremacy reinforcing their Woke claims. Reinforcing the whole narrative that Hannah-Jones so carefully helped to craft.

Whether it was actively denied, or simply not offered, Nikole Hannah-Jones not receiving tenure struck a nerve with the Woke Left. The reactions make that exceedingly clear. It reveals how overly sensitive they are, but also how powerful the Woke Mob has already become. If UNC yields to it, it will become more entrenched still, and to the point that any attempt at extricating radical politics from the supposed sound education of university will be met with total intolerance. Hark the sound.