After a hard-fought, controversial battle with the University of North Carolina ending with a tenure offer last week for Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and “1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, she’s taking her talents elsewhere. 

Hannah-Jones will be joining the faculty at Howard University, as the newly created Knight Chair in Race and Journalism in the university’s Cathy Hughes School of Communications.

She will also found the Center for Journalism and Democracy. According to the university, the center seeks to “train and support aspiring journalists in acquiring the investigative skills and  historical and analytical expertise needed to cover the crisis our democracy is facing.”

The center will work across multiple HBCUs. 

The acclaimed journalist spoke to CBS This Morning about her decision. 

“Look what it took to get tenure,” she told Gayle King about refusing her alma mater’s offer after its delayed offer of tenure. 

“To be denied it and to only have that vote occur on the last possible day on the last possible moment after a thread of legal action, after weeks of protest, after it became a national scandal, it’s just not something that I want anymore,” she continued. 

“It was embarrassing to be the first person to be denied tenure. It was embarrassing and I didn’t want this to become a public scandal,” she said. “I didn’t want to drag my university through the pages of newspapers because I was the first and the only Black person in that position to be denied tenure. I was willing to accept it.” 

Joining Hannah-Jones will also be Ta-Nehisi Coates, a Howard alumnus and the author of the book Between the World and Me. Coates will become the Sterling Brown Chair in English and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences, according to the statement. 

Both positions and the center will be funded by donations from an anonymous donor and the Knight, MacArthur, and Ford Foundations, totaling nearly $20 million. Both Coates and Hannah-Jones have been MacArthur Fellows.  

“I am so incredibly honored to be joining one of the most important and storied educational institutions in our country and to work alongside the illustrious faculty of the Cathy Hughes School of Communications and the brilliant students it draws in,” Hannah-Jones said. “One of my few regrets is that I did not attend Howard as an undergraduate, and so coming here to teach fulfills a dream I have long carried. I hope that the decision that Ta-Nehisi and I made to bring our talents to an HBCU will lead others to make a similar choice.”

Hannah-Jones is no stranger to Howard University, however. The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, of which she is one of four co-founders, established its first student chapter at the university in 2017. She and Coates, along with Howard alumnus and writer Jelani Cobb, spoke on a panel organized by the club in 2019, entitled Power of the Pen.