(Reuters) – George Washington University said on Friday it is investigating the case of a white professor who says she faked multiple Black identities that were central to her writings and research.
The situation came to light after the publication of a blog post attributed to professor Jessica Krug, in which the white author confesses to falsely claiming Black Caribbean heritage.
“For the better part of my adult life, every move I’ve made, every relationship I’ve formed, has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies,” the blog post read. “I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken.”
The post continued with Krug writing that she “eschewed my lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City under various assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim.”
Krug did not immediately respond to emailed and phoned requests for confirmation that she wrote the blog post.
George Washington University spokesperson Crystal Nosal said in a written statement that “We are aware of the post and are looking into the situation.”
The Washington, D.C. university would provide no more comment and did not explicitly confirm that Krug wrote the blog post.
The case is similar to that of Rachel Dolezal, a Washington state NAACP civil rights leader, who identified as Black but was biologically white.
Krug authored a 2018 book titled “Fugitive Modernities” that examined the political practices of those who fled slavery. The book was a finalist for the 2019 Frederick Douglass Book Prize and also the Harriet Tubman Prize.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
