Philanthropies eagerly back ex-UNC professor Hannah-Jones

NEW YORK (AP) — Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones used major philanthropic donors to build her future as a tenured professor at Howard University, just as other major donors sought to stymie the Pulitzer Prize-winning Black investigative reporter at the University of North Carolina.

Backed by $20 million in donations, Hannah-Jones announced Tuesday that she will establish the Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard to increase diversity in journalism. She also said that political interference from Arkansas newspaper publisher Walter Hussman, who pledged $25 million to UNC's journalism school and whose name adorns its building, resulted in questions about her receiving tenure, which she was belatedly offered last week following an outcry from students and faculty members.

“How could I believe I’d be able to exert academic freedom with the school’s largest donor so willing to disparage me publicly and attempt to pull the strings behind the scenes?” Hannah-Jones wrote in a statement. “Why would I want to teach at a university whose top leadership chose to remain silent, to refuse transparency, to fail to publicly advocate that I be treated like every other Knight Chair before me?”

The donations announced Tuesday — $5 million each from the MacArthur, Knight and Ford foundations and an anonymous donor — will also bring award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates to Howard, a historically Black school in the nation's capital and his alma mater, as the Sterling Brown Chair in the Department of English.

It’s a large gift for journalism, and one that points to a growing philanthropic effort to diversify news organizations and strengthen journalistic standards.

“It is important in a democracy like America, that journalism reflects America,” said Darren Walker, president of the...