Finally some good news on campus: Nikole Hannah-Jones has been denied tenure at the University of North Carolina. Although Hannah-Jones, the New York Times fabulist behind the anti-historical 1619 Project, had secured the endorsement of the school’s journalism department, the university’s board of trustees has intervened to deny her permanent employment.
The trustees made the right decision. Hannah-Jones has won impressive accolades, including the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and a Pulitzer Prize, but she deserves none of them. As academic historians from across the political spectrum noted when the 1619 Project first appeared, Hannah-Jones’s entire thesis depends upon a lie. “One of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain,” Hannah-Jones argued, “was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”
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