北卡罗来纳州温斯顿塞勒姆——在北卡罗莱纳州的旗舰公立大学拒绝为一名因在系统性种族主义方面的工作而获奖的杰出调查记者提供终身职位后，对该校黑人学生、教师和员工多年来所受待遇的不满再次出现。

周五，北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的数百名学生聚集在校长办公室附近的一个院子里，要求受托人重新考虑妮可·汉娜-琼斯的任期。妮可·汉娜-琼斯因在1619年研究奴隶制痛苦遗产的项目中的工作而获得普利策奖。

示威者通过扩音器讲述了多年来黑人学生在校园里遭受的待遇，并举着写有“1619……2021”等信息的标语。同样的挣扎”和“我可以给你1619个理由为什么汉娜-琼斯应该终身任职。”

尽管汉娜·琼斯的前任获得了这一荣誉，但今年早些时候，受托人决定停止提交汉娜·琼斯的终身教职申请，这引发了社区内部的一连串批评，并最终揭示了学校未能回答长期以来的关切所带来的挫折感。汉娜·琼斯的律师本周通知学校，她不会在没有任期的情况下加入教师队伍。

教师团体卡罗莱纳州黑人核心小组(Carolina Black Caucus)在上周的一次会议后报告称，越来越多的成员正在考虑离开学校，这促使校长凯文·古斯凯维奇(Kevin Guskiewicz)呼吁与核心小组领导人举行会议。

“士气低落，”核心小组副主席兼教育学院招聘主任帕特里夏·哈里斯说。

“这不是孤立的事件。这加剧了我们在校园里看到的情况，甚至在全国范围内，当涉及到黑人教师、员工和学生时，”她说。“这是一个系统性的问题，目标帖子不断被有色人种移动。”

该核心小组成立于1974年，当时黑人学生要求建立一个非裔美国人研究项目中心。索尼娅·海因斯黑人文化和历史中心于2004年开业。这三十年的延迟是在北卡罗来纳大学工作或就读的黑人所经历的问题历史的一部分。

当时的博士候选人约翰·查普曼(John K. Chapman)在2006年提交给北卡罗来纳大学的一篇论文指出了该校黑人员工在20世纪60年代的斗争，当时该校正式废除种族隔离制度。查普曼写道，1991年，北卡罗来纳大学管家协会发起了一场持续的斗争，以解决大学里持续存在的吉姆·克劳就业问题，导致了1996年的一场法律胜利，该胜利提供了加薪、增加培训，并正式承认了黑人工人对大学的贡献。

查普曼写道:“虽然教堂山被誉为‘天堂的南部’，但黑人校园工作者和社区居民通常将大学视为‘地狱的南部’或‘种植园’。”。“这与该大学白人至上的悠久历史及其作为教堂山主要机构和主要雇主的角色有关。”

2019年，校园被一座矗立多年的邦联雕像搅乱了。抗议者推翻了“沉默的萨姆”，但关于如何处理它的争议导致当时的议长辞职，校园警察局长退休。根据一项法律协议，这座雕像被移交给一群邦联后裔。

在目前的争议中，汉娜-琼斯接受了一份为期五年的合同，在她的任期申请搁置后，加入新闻学院担任种族和调查新闻的骑士主席。教堂山校区董事会主席理查德·史蒂文斯(Richard Stevens)说，负责审查终身教职申请的董事在1月份选择推迟对汉娜-琼斯提交的申请进行审查，因为有人质疑她的非学术背景。它从未提交给全体董事会批准。

学生团体主席拉马尔·理查兹(Lamar Richards)也是受托人，他本周正式要求董事会不迟于周三召开一次特别会议，就汉娜-琼斯的任期进行投票。

理查兹在一次采访中说:“这比任期要深刻得多。”。“有色人种在这所大学里长期不受尊重，他们是学者。即使她来了，她还是会被不尊重。任期不保证尊重。但它所做的，保护了她的工作，她能够以她想在卡罗莱纳州教的方式教它。”

在周五示威游行前的一次采访中，黑人学生运动主席和后起之秀塔利亚赫·万(Taliajah Vann)表示，当黑人教授很少时，黑人学生很难感到自己受到了重视。

“到目前为止，我在卡罗莱纳州的全部时间里有两位黑人教授，”她说。“所以(大学领导)认为我是一个很棒的学生，我值得在这里，但是你不认为像我这样的教授应该在教室里教我吗?太不合适了。”

杰斯梅·凯利是1995年北卡罗来纳大学的黑人毕业生，她说，从学生时代起，招聘和留住有才华的黑人教师就一直是个问题，她不能责怪不想留下来的教师或学生。

“为什么有人会去不想去的地方?”她说。“我们正在失去人才。我们正在失去机会，国家不在乎。”

UNC protesters cite ongoing frustrations amid tenure dispute

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Discontent over how Black students, faculty and staff have been treated for years at North Carolina's flagship public university is reemerging after the school refused to offer tenure to a prominent investigative journalist who's won awards for her work on systemic racism.

On Friday, several hundred students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gathered on a quad near the chancellor’s office to demand that trustees reconsider tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project examining the bitter legacy of slavery.

Demonstrators speaking through a bullhorn described years of frustrations over Black students' treatment on campus and held signs with messages including “1619 … 2021. Same Struggle,” and “I can give you 1,619 reasons why Hannah-Jones should be tenured.”

A decision by trustees earlier this year to halt Hannah-Jones’ tenure submission, despite her predecessors receiving the distinction, sparked a torrent of criticism from within the community and ultimately revealed the depth of the frustration over the school’s failure to answer longstanding concerns. Hannah-Jones' lawyers informed the school this week that she won't join the faculty without tenure.

The Carolina Black Caucus, a faculty group, reported after a meeting last week that a growing number of its members are considering leaving the school, prompting Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz to call for a meeting with caucus leaders.

“The morale is low,” said Patricia Harris, vice chairman of the caucus and director of recruitment for the school of education.

“This is not an isolated incident. It's exacerbated what we've been seeing across campus, and even across the country when it comes to Black faculty, staff and students,” she said. “This is a systemic issue where the goal posts are constantly being moved for people of color.”

The caucus was founded in 1974, when Black students were demanding the creation of a center for an African American studies program. The Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History opened in 2004. That three-decade delay is part of a history of problems experienced by Black people who either worked at or attended UNC.

A dissertation submitted to UNC in 2006 by then-Ph.D. candidate John K. Chapman pointed to struggles by the school's Black staff members in the 1960s, in the early years after the school officially desegregated. In 1991, the UNC Housekeepers Association initiated a sustained struggle to address the persistence of Jim Crow employment practices at the university, leading to a legal victory in 1996 that provided raises, increased training and a formal acknowledgment of the contributions of Black workers to the university, Chapman wrote.

“While Chapel Hill is known far and wide as ‘the Southern Part of Heaven,’ black campus workers and community residents commonly see the university as ‘the Southern Part of Hell’ or ‘the plantation,’" Chapman wrote. "This has to do with the university’s long history of white supremacy and its role as the dominant institution and main employer in Chapel Hill."

In 2019, the campus was roiled by a Confederate statue that had stood for years. Protesters toppled “Silent Sam,” but disputes over what to do with it led the chancellor at the time to resign and the campus police chief to retire. Under a legal settlement, the statue was turned over to a group of Confederate descendants.

In the current controversy, Hannah-Jones accepted a five-year contract to join the journalism school’s faculty as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism after her tenure application stalled. The trustee who vets tenure applications chose in January to postpone review of Hannah-Jones’ submission because of questions about her nonacademic background, said Richard Stevens, the chairman of the board of trustees for the Chapel Hill campus. It was never brought before the full board for approval.

Student body President Lamar Richards, who's also a trustee, formally requested this week that the board convene a special meeting no later than Wednesday to vote on tenure for Hannah-Jones.

“This is so much deeper than tenure," Richards said in an interview. "People of color have been disrespected at this university for so long that are academics. Even if she came here, she'd still be disrespected. Tenure does not guarantee respect. But what it does, it protects her work and that she's able to teach it the way she wants to teach it at Carolina.”

In an interview before Friday's demonstration, Black Student Movement President and rising junior Taliajah Vann said it’s difficult for Black students to feel valued when there are few Black professors.

“I’ve had two Black professors in my entire time at Carolina so far,” she said. “So (university leaders) think that I’m a great student and I deserve to be here, but you don’t think that professors who look like me should be in the classroom teaching me? It’s incredibly inappropriate.”

Jasmé Kelly, a 1995 UNC graduate who’s Black, said recruiting and keeping talented Black faculty has been a problem since she was a student, and she can’t blame faculty or students who don’t want to stay.

“Why would someone go where they’re not wanted?” she said. “We’re losing talent. We’re losing opportunities, and the state doesn’t care.”

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Associated Press writer Jonathan Drew in Chapel Hill contributed to this report.