UNC gives Hannah-Jones tenure. Now comes the hard part.

After nearly six weeks of controversy, the UNC Board of Trustees at last voted to approve the tenure appointment of Nikole Hannah-Jones at a special meeting Wednesday.

It’s about time.

Only after protests, nationwide criticism and threat of a federal discrimination lawsuit did the board finally decide to award tenure to Hannah-Jones. Now, the reputation of the school has been dented — and, per usual, university leaders have no one to blame but themselves.

The vote comes just one day before Hannah-Jones was scheduled to start her job as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. Her legal team notified the university last week that she wouldn’t join the faculty without tenure. Now, even as her tenure has been approved, it’s possible she will choose not to join the faculty at all.

“These last weeks have been very challenging and difficult and I need to take some time to process all that has occurred and determine what is the best way forward,” Hannah-Jones said in a statement after Wednesday’s vote. Who could blame her? This honor, well-deserved as it may be, hardly feels like one anymore now that her worth has been so thoroughly questioned.

University leaders say the issue of tenure for Hannah-Jones first came up at the January 2021 trustees meeting, but a vote was never held — reportedly due to political pressure from conservatives who objected to Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work on The 1619 Project. For weeks, the issue lay in the hands of the board, which received an official re-submission to consider her tenure appointment in late May. But no action was taken until UNC student body president Lamar Richards, himself a member of the Board of Trustees, formally requested a special board meeting to discuss the issue last week. It’s a reminder that students and faculty are too often the ones moving the needle on key issues at UNC, displaying a kind of leadership we’d like to see more of from those in powerful positions.

Despite Wednesday’s decision — and even if Hannah-Jones accepts her tenured position — much damage has already been done. The diminished trust the university community had in its leadership has been further eroded. The school has begun to see an exodus of faculty of color leaving the university, and others are said to be actively considering whether to do the same. Richards has even advised prospective students, faculty and staff of marginalized identities to seek opportunities elsewhere, telling them that UNC “will only bring you here to tokenize and exploit you.”

“This is not an isolated incident. It’s exacerbated what we’ve been seeing across campus, and even across the country when it comes to Black faculty, staff and students,” Patricia Harris, vice chairman of the Carolina Black Caucus, a faculty group, told the Associated Press last week.

Awarding Hannah-Jones tenure was the right thing to do, but it won’t solve a larger problem that has plagued UNC in recent years. The school has once again established itself as an institution of slower, not higher, learning. From the Silent Sam saga to the coronavirus reopening disaster, university leaders often end up doing the wrong thing before they do the right one.

Announcing the decision, UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz called Wednesday “an important day for our campus.” He’s right. But while the decision is no doubt positive news for Hannah-Jones and her supporters, it shouldn’t have taken UNC so long. The fact that it did signals a broader failure to support Black students and faculty, and it’s a reminder that UNC must work harder to address its shortcomings on race and diversity. Will the university be slow to do the right thing once again, or is the Hannah-Jones decision a signal that UNC is ready to live up to its ideals?

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This story was originally published June 30, 2021 at 6:11 PM with the headline "UNC gives Hannah-Jones tenure. Now comes the hard part.."