MSNBC is continuing to promote the widely discredited 1619 Project and its creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones. On Tuesday’s The Beat, guest host Jason Johnson brought on MSNBC’s 7:00 pm ET hour host Joy Reid to discuss Hannah-Jones’s decision to leave The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for a position at Howard University, a historically black university.
Reid slammed UNC for not offering Hannah-Jones tenure sooner. She ranted about the university’s delayed decision, claiming that they allowed one conservative board member to decide whether Hannah-Jones would receive tenure and humiliated her. She stated that even though some conservatives at the school may think this is a victory, ultimately, they will lose more faculty and recruits. She launched into tirade to Johnson:
And when they start losing recruits which means that all their other programs get weaker when faculty besides Nikole Hannah-Jones start saying you know what maybe I don't want to teach at a school where they allow a right wing member of the board to determine who can get tenure and to undercut and try to humiliate her and make this brilliant woman, whose got a Pulitzer prize and a MacArthur genius award in her pocket make her humiliated by saying you can only teach here without tenure, with no academic freedom and no safety in terms of your job security. You might start to see a lot of other people start to walk away, and I do hope that's what happens. I feel badly for the students at UNC, there are a lot of great students that are going to miss out. But you know what, this is a lesson that university needs to learn. I hope they'll lose a lot of money, too.
It is no surprise that Reid and Johnson praised Howard University for being an elite institution. Reid even hailed Howard for being dedicated to teaching the truth whereas UNC “dropped the bag”. However, what she failed to discuss was the fact that the 1619 Project is based on factually inaccurate claims regarding the American founding.
Reid smeared conservatives for being “in this war to suppress information” and afraid to learn the truth about the founders. She ranted about how black people are fed up with the right’s “sing-songy storybook history.” In reality, however, conservatives are not trying to suppress information, they are simply exposing the radical left’s agenda and the lies found in the 1619 Project -- which is just political propaganda, not the truth.
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Click “expand” to read the relevant transcript.
The Beat with Ari Melber
07/06/2021
6:25 p.m. EasternJASON JOHNSON: We’re back with Joy Reid, host of MSNBC’s The ReidOut, who taught a course on race, gender, and politics as a visiting professor at Howard University this past spring. And coming up next hour, she’ll sit down with Nikole Hannah-Jones along with Ta-Nehisi Coates, so she talks to the biggest brains that we can imagine. Joy, it’s great to have you here. I want the audience to know that this is basically going to be the conversation that we will be having on text.
JOY REID: Pretty much
JOHNSON: I want you to understand how real this is about to be.
JOHNSON: First off, I want to ask you as someone who has taught at Howard University, who knows what those students are like, talk about the significance of Nikole Hannah-Jones going to Howard University over Chapel Hill. What does that mean to the students, what does that mean to the institution?
REID: Well, I mean – I think, first of all, let’s start with the fact, and she talks about this, Nikole Hannah-Jones talked about it in her statement which I think everyone should read. You know we all come up, and you teach at a HBCU, so you know this, too. Being told the highest achievement as a high school student is go to Harvard, Yale, Stanford. You know, all the schools that we applied to with all our little hopes and dreams. But, if you think about the schools that have educated the greatest minds in black America, people like the Thurgood Marshalls of the world, Dr. King, it’s HCBUs that have produced the minds that broke segregation. Right? And so, I think we need to retrain our thinking about what it means to be an elite school. And so I love the fact that the, probably two of most elite minds in America, black, white or indifferent, are going to be at Howard University together means that, that school with now 15 million dollars. Right?
JOHNSON: Yes.
REID: In hand.
JOHNSON: And more coming.
REID: And more coming to be able to educate. I taught some of the brightest, most interesting, most you know they challenging students that I ever dealt with when I was teaching that course at Howard. These young people deserve to have the absolute best in terms of instructors and they're about to get it.
JOHNSON: So, and I agree with you. I am a UNC Chapel Hill alum that’s where I got my doctorate, I’m currently faculty at Morgan State University, go bears. I want to also talk about what it means as far as a larger movement when it comes to as you mentioned, you know black academics and scholars’ relationships with PWIs. Because look, my Alma Mater is, they're taking Ls on this. They had the scandal with Hubert Davis, you know their new coach. They just lost Nikole Hannah-Jones, do you think that this is going to be a lesson that predominantly white colleges recognize that you can't engage in this kind of politics and hostility without taking a hit in your public relations or do you think it is going to ossify it? Do you think that there are racists at Chapel Hill right now, who think that this is a victory even though it has disappointed students and faculty alike?
REID: Well, I mean they may think it is a victory until elite high school seniors start rethinking whether they’d rather be at UNC or at Howard because if I’m now coming up and I have an interest in journalism or I have an interest in history, if I have an interest learning about this country and then learning to speak about it and becoming a public intellectual, I’m now putting Howard much higher on my list than UNC, they’ve lost a hot faculty, they're going to start to lose recruits.
And when they start losing recruits which means that all their other programs get weaker when faculty besides Nikole Hannah-Jones start saying you know what maybe I don't want to teach at a school where they allow a right wing member of the board to determine who can get tenure and to undercut and try to humiliate her and make this brilliant woman, whose got a Pulitzer prize and a MacArthur genius award in her pocket make her humiliated by saying you can only teach here without tenure, with no academic freedom and no safety in terms of your job security. You might start to see a lot of other people start to walk away, and I do hope that's what happens. I feel badly for the students at UNC, there are a lot of great students that are going to miss out. But you know what, this is a lesson that university needs to learn. I hope they'll lose a lot of money, too.
JOHNSON: Honestly Joy, I don't think they'll learn their lesson until a number one basketball recruit comes out and says you know what, I’m going to leave Chapel Hill because I want to study critical race theory at Howard. I think when that happens, suddenly – suddenly they’ll start paying attention.
REID: How do we don’t know it doesn’t? Because these schools only care about money and let’s just remember, the right is in this war to suppress information.
JOHNSON: Right.
REID: They're so terrified that Americans can't handle the truth about the founders. It’s like kind of ipso facto, no kidding these people were doing fine from 1619 on until the 17th – 18th century, what changed? Well, they made a lot of money. They were enjoying the fruits of their labor and didn't want to share it with the king. This isn’t going to crush too many Americans that have half a brain and enough security to understand that people can be you know villainess and also do a few things that are great. I think that most Americans are mature enough, but unfortunately the Republican Party is not mature enough to be able to hold those two ideas in their heads at the same time, so they’re panicking because what’s happening is that Black people, we’re really not interested in the BS any longer.
JOHNSON: Right.
REID: We’re not going to take your pabulum version of history. We’re not going to take your sing-songy storybook history. We want the truth. And it’s not just black folks, a lot of young Americans of all races are saying give us the truth, stop treating us as if we’re not mature enough to handle it.
JOHNSON: I want to get to real quick because you said like I read Nikole Hannah-Jones’s statement with like the ether beat in the back of my mind
REID: Yes.
JOHNSON: But I want to read this one last part and get your thoughts on it. You know she said “my commit to you has not waivered. I just will continue to do as I have in the past as an alum of the school and not the faculty, I hope you will consider Howard or another HBCU if you ever seek a new educational home, but whatever you do, I know you will continue to fight for justice.” That was sort of her Suge Knight moment of saying like look if you tired of people all up in your videos, messing with your academic career, come to an HBCU. Joy, do you think that message is going to resonate and that more students are going to come out of senior year and say hey I’m going to an HBCU
REID: But hold on a second that was written and that was directed at Dean King who’s a top dean at UNC. So, if she starts to get faculty to start coming to Howard, I mean let's just be clear, Howard University just pulled a coup
JOHNSON: Right.
REID: You want to talk about a coup this is January 6th, right, the attempted coup that one failed. This one succeeded. For Howard University right now, they could start to attract top academic talent in terms of students but also in terms of faculty. And those faculty are very highly sought after as you know being an academic guy yourself. If people start saying you know what, where I want to be is where Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates are and the amount of endowment money that they’re going to be able to put in place and other HBCUs are going to start to compete. You have now created a creative marketplace at HBCUs that hasn’t been this hot since the 1950s. So, I am excited to see whether or not that marketplace produces incredible financial and academic results for Howard and for other HBCUs, sorry UNC, you dropped the bag.
