UNC Student Body President Lamar Richards said he believes the ongoing dispute over the tenure application of incoming professor Nikole Hannah-Jones is just the latest element in the university’s long-standing history of mistreating communities of color.
Richards’ comments came during the inaugural meeting of the UNC Campus President’s Council Wednesday night, a group of student leaders that will meet monthly to discuss campus issues and events. The council’s 13 other members joined Richards and shared thoughts about the university’s treatment of minority populations within its community.
During the conversation, Richards described the situation as a “racial epidemic” that reaches far beyond the recent example of Hannah-Jones, a Putlizer Prize-winning journalist and MacArthur fellow, not being granted tenure like past, comparable professors.
“This issue isn’t just about the Nikole Hannah-Jones situation and her receiving tenure,” said the UNC student body president. “It’s been a horrible condition here at Carolina for marginalized identities, underrepresented identities for so long. This tenure issue is the latest on a long, long line of issues. And quite honestly, whether she gets tenure or not, whether she comes here or not, the true root of oppression is built within the university and the fabric of it and the foundation. It’s unfortunate because we as students, and our peers that we represent, we’re paying the price. We’re losing the good faculty and staff of color because they’re being overworked, underpaid and disrespected.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Richards formally filed a request to the UNC Board of Trustees to call a special meeting to consider the tenure application of Hannah-Jones. Reports emerged in May that members of the board failed to act on the incoming professor’s tenure request due to political motivations, with UNC Faculty Chair Mimi Chapman recently telling the campus community the board received the application in January. Hannah-Jones, whose legal team has since said she will not begin her position at UNC without tenure, is set to be the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Reporting. Previous Knight Chairs at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media received tenure upon their hiring, which school leadership recommended to the Board of Trustees for Hannah-Jones as well.
Other Black and indigenous faculty member recently announced their own departures from UNC, citing the treatment of Hannah-Jones and minority communities. Richards referenced this in his comments Wednesday.
“If we don’t see academics of color getting tenure now,” he said, “if we don’t see staff of color who clean our campus being respected, how can we expect to receive that down the road? How can we expect a world to respect us, with our mighty Carolina degrees, if our own university, while we’re students, isn’t uplifting us and giving us the respect that we deserve?”
On June 17, Richards penned an open letter published by NC Policy Watch voicing these concerns to prospective students and faculty. He invited them to “look elsewhere” as Carolina struggles with reckoning and addressing its shortcomings in equitable or equal treatment. Richards said Wednesday he’s since received “some pushback” from UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and fellow Board of Trustee members about the comments.
“I stand 1,000 percent beside my words,” the student body president said. “We came to learn, to get a quality education everybody talks so gloriously about — not to take on the task of being the person to galvanize or bring together the entire Black, Latinx or LGBTQ community or find ways to bolster support for ourselves when the university gives up on us. We didn’t sign up to do that, we’re not being paid for it.”
“The reason that I wrote that,” Richards said later, “is because you shouldn’t have to deal with this or inherit this. The reason we’re here, and the reason I’m staying I’m committed to it, is because I was elected to do so and I’m taking on this fight now. But I fear that people who were here before me, 50 years ago, [were] fighting the same fight. We’ve all been fighting the same fight over and over again with very little, if any, progress.”
The UNC Black Student Movement held a demonstration on UNC campus Friday to voice support for Hannah-Jones and the university’s communities of color. Dozens of UNC departments, programs and student groups have also issued statements. Student leaders said Wednesday seeing this was encouraging, but Richards also acknowledged his belief of truly changing the university’s culture comes with significant and continued effort.
“It’s going to have to take more,” he said. “It is going to take our athletes who bring in the money and the bucks for the universities saying, ‘No, I’m not agreeing to come play for your university.’ It’s going to take our coaches saying, ‘Athletics is about more than just throwing or passing the ball.’ Our university is one, this isn’t just an academic fight. It has to be a fight inherited by the entire university.”
Richards and other student leaders part of the Campus President’s Council met with Chancellor Guskiewicz on Wednesday to also voice experiences and concerns.
The full Campus President’s Council meeting from Wednesday can be found on the UNC Student Government Executive Branch’s Facebook page.
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