UNC-Chapel Hill settles with Hannah-Jones in tenure flap

The flagship school of North Carolina's university system announced Friday that it has reached a settlement with a journalist who left to join a historically Black university.

David Boliek, chairman of the Board of Trustees at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the settlement with Nikole Hannah-Jones was for less than $75,000.

Attorneys for Hannah-Jones threatened to file a federal discrimination lawsuit against UNC-Chapel Hill and its board of trustees over the failure to give her tenure, news outlets reported at the time.

Boliek said that a formal lawsuit was never filed by the attorneys for Hannah-Jones.

Hannah- Jones couldn't be reached for comment.

Several professors and alumni voiced their displeasure, as well as Black students and faculty questioned whether the predominantly white university values them, as a result of the dispute over Hannah-Jones.

Hannah-Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her work on The New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project focusing on America's history of slavery, was hired as UNC's Knight Chair in Race and I investigative journalism.

She noted that she hadn't sought out the job and was recruited by UNC's journalism dean before her tenure application was put on hold over concerns about her work.

The tenure application of Hannah-Jones was stopped after a board member raised questions about her nonacademic background. She was given a five-year contract even though her predecessors were given tenure. The trustees finally voted to give tenure.

While the trustees voted 9-4 to offer her tenure, Hannah-Jones said in an interview with The Associated Press that the unfairness of how she was treated as a Black woman led her to turn the offer down. Howard University is a historically Black school in Washington, DC.