The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” earned her master’s degree in journalism from Chapel Hill in 2003. The university’s April announcement called her “one of the country’s leading voices in journalism covering housing and school segregation, civil rights and racial injustice in the U.S.” Susan King, dean of journalism at Chapel Hill, was quoted as saying, “This is the story of a leader returning to a place that transformed her life and career trajectory.” Not even a month later, King told NC Policy Watch that the university’s trustees had declined to take action on approving Hannah-Jones’s tenure. That’s despite the fact that Hannah-Jones’s case was approved by faculty committees and university administrators and was, in King's retelling, as well reviewed as any she’d ever seen.