SIO294: The Hannah-Jones Tenure Denial is Worse Than You Think
Serious Inquiries Only
Thomas Smith
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2021
⏱️ 56 minutes
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Summary
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer-winning journalist and developer of the 1619 Project, was appointed to a tenured professorship at UNC Chapel Hill. This is a position that is funded by the Knight foundation. However, a board of old white lawyers who happen to be the Trustees of the University, denied Hannah-Jones tenure, against the recommendations of, well... everyone who should matter in the decision making process. Many people have made bad faith arguments and whataboutisms, but Dr. Lindsey Osterman (tenured professor) is here to give us real perspective on it.
NYT: Nikole Hannah-Jones Denied Tenure, The 1619 Project, UNC Chapel Hill Faculty Handbook, Hussman School of Journalism Tenure Procedures, Open letter from the Hussman faculty, "We Are Critics of Nikole Hannah-Jones. Her Tenure Denial Is A Travesty.", Criticisms of her appointment, NYT note explaining revision of Hannah-Jones's essay, NC Policy Watch's Special Report on NHJ's tenure denial
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to? Serious inquiries only. |
| 0:29.6 | Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries only. This is episode 294. I'm Thomas with me as always. |
| 0:34.8 | Is Dr. Lindsey Osterman? How are you doing, Lindsey? Fantastic. How are you? Doing well. I think this |
| 0:40.5 | entire show is actually just trying to get you mad. Yeah, it's trying. We'll see if this exceeds. |
| 0:47.2 | I mean, I guess in the beginning I tricked you because we're like, hey, come talk about evo psych, |
| 0:51.4 | you know, just some stuff that you might enjoy. And now it's like, Lindsey, you should be mad about |
| 0:57.5 | this. Tell us how mad we should be about this thing, you know, seems to be the thing now. I think |
| 1:02.5 | I've earned a nice episode about like puppies or, I don't know, incest porn, something. |
| 1:10.5 | Puppy incest porn. I mean, if there is, oh, that's your line. That's your, that was too far. |
| 1:16.9 | That's my line. Incest fine. Puppy's fine. Puppy incest too far for you. Okay. Okay. I see. |
| 1:23.8 | This is a weird thing. All right. No, if there is any puppy related evo psych content, |
| 1:31.2 | I think the audience would be happy with that. So if you want a nice pleasant episode, |
| 1:37.1 | find that and we can do it. But not today. Today. Okay. We've got something very frustrating to talk |
| 1:43.4 | about. It's the Nicole Hannah Jones controversy. Mm-hmm. Maybe we'll try our normal format |
| 1:49.6 | where I try to summarize something and you tell me if I got it right and then teach us all |
| 1:53.0 | what went on. That sounds fun. I'm just really excited to get your actual perspective on this |
| 1:57.8 | because it is about tenure. Mm-hmm. It is about university related stuff. You are a |
| 2:02.9 | tenured professor. Are you not? Yep. I am. So, you know, something about that. I do. That's cool. |
| 2:08.8 | I think that will be very valuable because, well, let's get into it. So Nicole Hannah Jones is |
| 2:15.2 | really great. I'm not going to try to pretend I don't have any bias in this. She's a fantastic |
| 2:19.5 | investigative journalist. She was responsible for developing the 1619 project. She wrote |
| 2:25.6 | parts of it and also obviously there are a lot of people involved in it. It was a fantastic thing. |
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