HAMPTON, Va.
Former Time columnist Jack E. White, dismayed by Hampton University’s approach to freedom of speech, says he will not return to his teaching post there.
“I like the kids in Hampton, but the atmosphere in Hampton is in contradiction to the goals of a journalism program,” White told the Newport News Daily Press.
White, a 59-year-old journalism veteran who also served as editor of Time’s “Nation” section, was hired in 2004 to teach reporting and news writing at the historically Black university’s Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He was an endowed chair during the 2005-2006 academic year.
University spokeswoman Yuri Rodgers Milligan says White’s job was a one-year position. White, however, says he removed his name from consideration for the upcoming school year.
Tony Brown, dean of the journalism school, says there was never any discussion about extending White’s appointment and called it “puzzling” that White would attack the program after two years.
“Why, a reasonable person would ask, did it take White, a self-described seasoned journalist, two-and-a-half years at Hampton University to suddenly become outraged at what he now describes as a conspicuous and blatant suppression of free speech?” Brown wrote in a response Friday evening.
