High School Cancels Nikole Hannah-Jones Lecture Over Fear Of Controversy

Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The 1619 Project, said Monday that a private high school in Massachusetts disinvited her from a Black History Month event at which it previously invited her to speak.

Hannah-Jones blamed the cancellation on a “propaganda campaign that has pretended elite white schools trying to deal with the legacy of racism are stoking the new Salem Witch trials.” She speculated that the school was afraid her speech would invite backlash and “another of the ‘”woke”‘ people are ruining America’” story.

“I think it’s pretty clear that we are in a moment where schools are facing intense pressure not to invite speakers that are considered to be focusing too much on race and racism and the Black experience in American history,” Hannah-Jones said, according to the Boston Globe.

Hannah-Jones created the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, which places slavery and its legacy at the center of America’s origin story. She claims that her curriculum is now taught in schools across the country by more than 4,000 teachers, according to USA Today.

Hannah-Jones said she did not feel “cancelled,” as she still has a platform, but she expects to see “many substack (and) mainstream media stories about this (and) cancel culture at elite schools.”

Numerous professors have been censured by schools in recent months for their views on race and racism. MIT cancelled a high-profile lecture by geophysical sciences professor Dorian Abbot Sept. 30 after graduate students and Twitter users complained that his views of diversity, equity and inclusion programs “threaten the safety and belonging” of students. Additionally, UCLA professor Gordon Klein was briefly suspended in June 2020 after refusing to grade black students’ work more leniently than that of white students.

Middlesex School and Nikole Hannah-Jones did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.