Jack Stripling and Andy Thomason:

Kreiss said he anticipated that, given the national controversy around “The 1619 Project,” there would be some political pushback about hiring Hannah-Jones. At the same time, he said, the Chapel Hill professors would not have brought someone on board who did not embrace the university’s fundamental commitment to intellectual rigor and evidence-based argument.

“If we saw Nikole Hannah-Jones as being an ideologue, who was coming here to push a political point of view, I don’t think the faculty would have so overwhelmingly endorsed her,” Kreiss said. “That’s not the way we teach. It’s not part of our values here.”