Academia's long, sad, downward spiral

The Friday Letter / No. 443

A bevy of malcontents at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill erupted in self-righteous indignation over the Memorial Day weekend after university trustees denied tenure to their new celebrity professor, Nikole Hannah-Jones, she of the debunked fictional 1619 Project.

Writing at the News & Observer in Raleigh, reporter Kate Murphy describes the protesters as “professors, students, alumni, journalists, professional athletes, artists and political activists.”

Although universities get to decide who does and who doesn’t get tenure, Nikole says she will sue, apparently on grounds that as a victim of racism and a former New York Times reporter, she is exempt from normal standards. Great start to a new career.

“Typically, a tenure-track professor works five or six years in a probationary period before that professor is up for the appointment” Murphy writes. Following that process, “the tenure approval process can take months.”

And the process goes outside the granting institution. Tenured professors from other universities both inside and outside the candidate’s field examine the candidate’s dossier. The candidate is evaluated on his academic credentials, research, and published academic writing. Nikole has been a college teacher and published academic writer for exactly zero days.

About 35% of UNC-CH faculty have tenure. The American Association of University Professors puts the national average at 21 percent. And while teachers with master’s degrees can earn tenure at most community colleges, four-year schools almost always require an earned doctorate, in field, for tenure.

Nikole does not have a doctorate. She has an undergraduate degree in history and African-American studies and a master’s in journalism and media. Other than degrees in education and women’s studies (and excepting the history part), these degrees are about as low as one can get on the academic prestige ladder.

Add to that Nicole’s fabricated, wholly discredited piece in the New York Times Magazine that America was founded in 1619 to protect slavery, and the only reasonable conclusion one can draw is that she is hardly a scholar.

Her journalism production consists mostly of leftwing propaganda and angry tirades decrying perceived “institutional racism” for the New York Times and other publications. At UNC-CH she will be paid $180,000 a year on a five-year contract. A community college adjunct chemistry professor with a real master’s degree teaching four classes is lucky to earn $20,000, with no benefits.

One can argue that if the University of North Carolina wants to sully its reputation with nonsense like the hiring of Nikole Hannah-Jones, that is its business. But keep in mind that millions of your tax dollars – even if you live in Alaska – are siphoned from your wallet each year to support this nonsense. And that isn’t the worst part: According to Medill Reports, our children are captive to the 1619 Project indoctrination in 4,500 American schools.

Poisoning children with the lie that America was founded on slavery and not on the pursuit of religious, economic, and personal liberty is educational malpractice that should be punishable by termination of anyone who engages in it at public expense.

And we remain a bit suspicious about celebrity “professors” and their actual level of engagement in the courses they teach. This first drew our attention when Al Gore was contracted to teach a course at Tennessee. We wondered then as we wonder now: Do these folks stay up late hacking their way through piles of inscrutable sophomoric creations? The very idea is difficult to contemplate. We rather suspect that these celebrities read from scripts written for them, leaving the actual work of evaluating student submissions to teaching assistants. We could be wrong (but probably aren’t).

Nikole is a founder of the Ida B. Wells Society, self-described as “a national organization dedicated to increasing and retaining reporters and editors of color that also works to educate news organizations and journalists on how the inclusion of diverse voices can raise the caliber, impact and visibility of investigative journalism as a means of promoting transparency and good government.” It is funded by Hungarian-American communist George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and in part by the leftist Ford Foundation.

Nikole reacted to the tenure rejection with a tweet: “It has truly fortified my spirit and my resolve,” she said. “You all know that I will OK. But this fight is bigger than me, and I will try my best not to let you down,” apparently not having learned grammar in grammar school.

Steve Combs skirmished in the college writing trenches for 15 years, the last 10 in the Free State of Florida at Valencia College, one of the nation’s largest state community colleges.

In the news . . .

While most of the country opens its eyes to the toxic bigotry of critical race theory, Washington State moves to require its indoctrination in all public schools, Jason Rantz writes at The Federalist. Its curriculum teaches that all white people, even the poor, are privileged and racist. In their re-education training, Rantz writes, employees are told that race is a social construct that has “been adapted to meet the needs of white supremacy culture.” Those who disagree are fingered as examples of white supremacy in action.

The Law of Supply and Demand at work. Perhaps in response to Joe Biden’s declaration that black people don’t have accountants or lawyers, a summer program in accounting for New York high school students doesn’t allow white students to apply, Campus Reform reports. Sponsors include the state’s CPA association and the Moynihan Scholarship Fund with endorsements of several New York colleges and universities.

Quotes for today

“Never again can we allow a private individual like Mark Zuckerberg to undermine the nation’s election process. The fact that he used more than $400 million of his own money to insert himself and his organizations into the actual election process and manage local election offices, as well as the collection of ballots, should have led to criminal indictment.”

– Sebastian Gorka, from his American Greatness column.  

“They came to the wrong state.”

– Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, announcing that Texas will defend its borders against illegal immigration with arrests and detention, on Glen Beck’s radio program.