I will stay away from the academic politics of hiring "professors of data science", but if I interpret the question more specifically as "does data science offer problems of mathematical interest", I might refer to Bandeira's list of <A HREF="https://afonsobandeira.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/10lectures42problems/">42 Open Problems in Mathematics of Data Science.</A>

(The full list from 2016 is <A HREF="https://people.math.ethz.ch/~abandeira/TenLecturesFortyTwoProblems.pdf">here</A>, and Bandeira's home page links to solutions of some of these.)