WHAT IS THE NATURE OF ACADEMIC TENURE THESE DAYS?

The journalism faculty at the University of North Carolina, a university otherwise known for their basketball coach taking his pension after Wisconsin knocked them out of the most recent tournament, recently offered a job to a New York Times star.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times journalist who developed the magazine’s controversial “1619 Project,” will no longer join UNC-Chapel Hill’s journalism department as a tenured professor after the school’s board of trustees expressed concern about awarding tenure to someone outside of academia, according to a new report.

Instead, Hannah-Jones will join the university’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media as a fixed-term “Professor of the Practice,” with the option of being reviewed for tenure within five years, according to the [Raleight] News & Observer. She will serve as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.

The predictable political posturing ensues.  "Bows to conservative crazies."  "Conservatives in charge."  "Procedurally correct."

The appointment in question is controversial, for a number of reasons.  The procedural problem is the same whether somebody notorious or somebody competent is brought into a university, particularly into a professional discipline, without the terminal degree.  It's altogether fitting or proper that an astronaut be brought in as professor of the practice of engineering, a governor brought in as professor of the practice of public administration, an editor brought in as professor of the practice of journalism.  Institutionally, the term implies a different job description than that of the conventional professor, who must teach, seek external funding, publish, and sit on faculty committees.  It might even elicit more respect from students than the other job titles (instructor, visiting lecturer) that carry a similar job description.  I wonder if university rules spell out different shared governance voting rights and committee obligations for professors of the practice than apply to conventional tenure-track faculty of all ranks.

Ms Hannah-Jones's appointment as professor of the practice, with the possibility of a future tenure review, strikes me as the correct procedural decision.  Inside Higher Ed's Colleen Flaherty suggests her journalistic chops are sufficient.  "Indeed, it would be difficult to find a candidate for tenure in journalism or maybe any field with stronger credentials than a Pulitzer and a MacArthur fellowship."  That Pulitzer wasn't peer reviewed.  The interpretations her 1619 Project put forth don't necessarily stand up, and some of them the Times subsequently retracted.  That despite a public endorsement from a Columbia journalism professor.

Jelani Cobb, the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, said the board’s decision about Hannah-Jones was “outrageous.”

“This is a person who has a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur award. But by any standard, any metric, this is someone who would qualify for tenure. And certainly, if this were to be evaluated on the basis of her standing among her peers, which is the general standard for tenure, she would meet that. So what we're seeing is a blatant intrusion of politics into what is supposed to be protected by academic freedom. And tenure exists precisely because faculty members need to be protected from this kind of politicized decision making.”

I suppose it's churlish to suggest that Pulitzers and MacArthurs are political, but it is what it is.  In the usual course of promotion and tenure, a university-wide committee of faculty reviews dossiers.  It's possible that once the home college of journalism's faculty committee and dean concur, the provost and the university committee accept that judgement.  That, however, keeps any skeptical historians from weighing in on that appointment.  At the same time,

If it is accurate that this refusal was the result of viewpoint discrimination against Hannah-Jones, particularly based on political opposition to her appointment, this decision has disturbing implications for academic freedom, which is vital in allowing faculty members to voice divergent views and in avoiding casting what the Supreme Court called a “pall of orthodoxy” over the classroom. When decisions on academic tenure incorporate a form of political litmus test, this freedom is gravely compromised.

That ship might already have sailed, as explicit or implicit political litmus tests have made their way into hiring and tenure deliberations.  A countervailing exercise of power by trustees or legislators, though, is not likely to turn out well.