> You may believe the 1619 Project is a "major indoctrination effort" and that it lacks "academic rigor", but that's not established fact at all. Many people think highly of it and of her work - including her potential UNC professional colleagues, who wanted her there in a tenured job at an excellent university. It does represent a point of view that disagrees with established ones, but that's almost the point of academic research: Find where established beliefs are flawed. Especially on sensitive topics, that may result in an angry reaction and division; that shouldn't stop people from publishing, and that's what tenure protects.

If the intention of the 1619 Project was merely to use rigorous historical methods to expand the purview of the historical record in accordance with the useful-sounding aspects of truthful claims that have been suppressed, as some insist, it would be a valuable, if not necessary, contribution.

However, the goal the 1619 Project is not, and never was, to improve our historical understanding. Rather, its goal was always to perpetrate a critical historiography that muddles and besmirches it (i.e. problematize). This it seeks to achieve by calling into doubt the American metanarrative and establishing alongside it, if not in place of it, the critical race Theoretical metanarrative instead: that the United States is indelibly racist and has been since its origins. This includes undermining trust in the liberal ideas of individualism and human universality, wherein people are judged by the contents of their character and recognized for their common humanity, and forwarding identity-group thinking that is more useful for (radical) identity politics.

The fact that so many professors at UNC shares a critical consciousness is a sign of how far gone that university is from its original liberal vision of truth-finding in favor of identity politics.

> What distinguishes those things? Who decides? Just because it has happened at some time in some place, is that evidence that it's happening now? Should we eliminate all academic freedom?

If an academic is engaging in critical consciousness, basically creating meta-narratives to further a radical political activist goal instead of truth-finding, it should be treated the same as an academic that mainly teaches baptism of Christianity in history class and produce a revisionist meta-narrative to further baptism. Such a person would not receive academic freedom protections.

Teachers are employees, and freedom of speech has never been recognized in that context. For example, it would be kind of ridiculous if a science teacher was allowed to teach students flat earth theory because of freedom of speech. Outside of the classroom, which was the subject of the comment above, obviously it would be covered by the 1st amendment.

She is free to continue doing activism and even continue her indoctrination efforts, she just can't expect to subvert university resources under tenure to achieve her activist goals. Note however that she was still offered an untenured position.

The importance of the point that her 1619 Project is not a serious attempt at historical understanding but a project within critical race Theory is beyond calculability. This is because the standard approach to challenging the 1619 Project’s bogus claims and attempts to roll itself out into our society and educational system is to challenge its historical legitimacy, and this is unfortunately a necessary part of engaging with it. The trouble is, because the 1619 Project neither is history nor claims to be history, this necessary activity is ultimately severely limited in its purposed utility.

Letting political activism like this into the universities therefore makes it harder to continue the Universitys original mission of continuing the liberal project of real knowledge seeking and research. Not everyone is fit for research and teaching, and you do have to protect the liberal system from efforts such as this for them to remain centers of knowledge production and truth seeking.