Hannah-Jones: Initially Being Denied Tenure ‘Goes Hand in Hand’ with Anti-Voter Fraud Bills

EXCERPT:

HANNAH-JONES: "I mean, I think that’s what’s been so distressing about this entire debacle is not only the tenured denial but the lack of transparency from the administration at the university, the unwillingness to just be truthful about what happened and to let me, as well as the public, know what happened. I don’t know why people find me so threatening. I’m a journalist. I just produce journalism. But I think that we are clearly in this moment in our country where after, you know, George Floyd and kind of the global reckoning we started to see some real shifts in the understanding of kind of the structural inequality of racism upon which this country was built. And I think powerful people have a big investment in maintaining the status quo. They don’t want us to recognize the systemic inequality in our country, because if you recognize it then you have to fix it. So I’ve just kind of been caught up in this larger you know, concerns about the demographic shifts in our country, about the balance of power in our country, and, you know, trying to really silence me at the university as part of a wave of these anti-1619 Project, anti-critical race theory, anti-history bills that are being passed, and they’re being passed in the same legislatures that are also passing voter suppression laws. So these two things are going hand in hand."