1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones may be a clown, but her antics have made the University of North Carolina seem like an entire circus.

For those of you just joining this story, hop in here as we go through the wild ride that is the Nikole Hannah-Jones University tenure saga.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is known to most of the world as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The New York Times' 1619 Project. The project is built on shoddy revisionist history that has been met with widespread criticism from the left and right, which forced the Times to actually change the central thesis of the work. This, of course, undermined the work as a whole and makes it clear that the Pulitzer Prize was given for political reasons and not because of the quality of the history.

All of this led to the University of North Carolina reconsidering whether or not to offer Nikole Hannah-Jones a tenured position at the university. The plan was to offer Hannah-Jones the tenured position of Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. However, in May of this year, UNC announced they would not offer Hannah-Jones the tenured position, largely due to a few well-connected conservative donors strongly pushing back against the move due to the aforementioned shoddy and embarrassing work of the 1619 Project.

Basically, a few big name donors, including Walter Hussman, for whom the UNC School of Journalism is named, said that it would be a bad idea for UNC to attach its name to Hannah-Jones.

The university decided to instead offer Nikole Hannah-Jones the same position, just non-tenured on a five-year contract.

Now, remember, Nikole Hannah-Jones does not have the normal pedigree of a tenured professional. She doesn't have a doctoral degree of any sort.

Still, of course, the reason she contends tenure wasn't offered was, you guessed it, racism.

UNC declining to offer tenure to Hannah-Jones resulted in, surprise surprise, clashes with the police of all things.

Who would have thought that the person who was honored to have the BLM riots called the 1619 Uprising would have supporters who would tussle with police on her behalf?

On July 1, after months of controversy, the UNC Board of Trustees caved to the woke mob and offered tenure to fake historian Nikole Hannah-Jones.

You would think this is the ultimate clown move for the university, right? But no, today Nikole Hannah-Jones somehow ends up with the last laugh.

After months of back and forth at UNC, trying to court Nikole Hannah-Jones and appease her followers, and days after they finally beclown themselves and the entire board of trustees, Hannah-Jones decided to REJECT their offer of tenure.

Nikole Hannah-Jones just pulled off the ultimate troll move, embarrassing her alma mater after dragging them through the mud and letting them wallow in it. Hannah-Jones has instead taken a position at Howard University, a historically black university.

Long story short, UNC considers tenure for Hannah-Jones, decides against it, faces backlash, tries to compromise, fails, offers tenure, and then the tenure is rejected.

Ben Shapiro has the most correct and hilarious take on the whole situation:

Even in defeat, so to speak, members of UNC faculty continue to embarrass themselves.

While disappointed, we are not surprised. We support Ms. Hannah-Jones's choice. The appalling treatment of one of our nation's most-decorated journalists by her own alma mater was humiliating, inappropriate, and unjust.

We will be frank: it was racist.

Our school highly regards Ms. Hannah-Jones's work, ability, and achievements. We regret that the top echelons of leadership at UNC-Chapel Hill failed to follow established processes, did not conduct themselves professionally and transparently, and created a crisis that shamed our institution, all because of Ms Hannah-Jones's honest accounting of America's racial history. It is understandable why Ms. Hannah-Jones would take her brilliance elsewhere.

These faculty members continue to praise Hannah-Jones, kissing her feet and calling their school racist in the process. I mean, honestly, how can anyone with a straight face blame this situation on "Ms Hannah-Jones's honest accounting of America's racial history"???

The entire controversy is that it wasn't an honest account. It was based on a false premise that the United States was founded to preserve slavery. A completely invented narrative that, again, The New York Times retracted after backlash. That's the issue. Not RaCiSm.

That members of UNC faculty would still defend the 1619 Project and Hannah-Jones is like adding insult to injury.

Shapiro is right, UNC has earned every bit of this embarrassment.

Take a bow, UNC.