A tenured African History professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., has resigned from her position amidst an investigation that she masqueraded as a black woman for years.
“Update regarding Jessica Krug: Dr. Krug has resigned her position, effective immediately. Her classes for this semester will be taught by other faculty members, and students in those courses will receive additional information this week,” George Washington University tweeted Friday afternoon.
Update regarding Jessica Krug: Dr. Krug has resigned her position, effective immediately. Her classes for this semester will be taught by other faculty members, and students in those courses will receive additional information this week.
— GW University (@GWtweets) September 9, 2020
The university initially launched its investigation into the professor after a 1,200-word blog post published under Krug’s name detailed her history of lying about her race throughout her life, and called upon herself to be “cancelled.”
“To an escalating degree over my adult life, I have 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: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness,” wrote the author. “I have not only claimed these identities as my own when I had absolutely no right to do so — when doing so is the very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures — but I have formed intimate relationships with loving, compassionate people who have trusted and cared for me when I have deserved neither trust nor caring.”
Describing the professor’s secret as shocking, the George Washington University history department released a statement calling on Krug to resign as an associate professor for the university.
“With what she has termed her ‘audaciously deceptive’ appropriation of an Afro-Caribbean identity, she has betrayed the trust of countless current and former students, fellow scholars of Africana Studies, colleagues in our department and throughout the historical discipline, as well as community activists in New York City and beyond. The discipline of history is concerned with truth telling about the past. With her conduct, Dr. Krug has raised questions about the veracity of her own research and teaching,” said the department.
Krug does not appear to have released any public statements acknowledging the investigation or her subsequent resignation from the university.
The blog post revealing the professor’s secret concluded: “I have lived this lie, fully, completely, with no exit plan or strategy. I have built only this life, a life within which I have operated with a radical sense of ethics, of right and wrong, and with rage, rooted in Black power, an ideology which every person should support, but to which I have no possible claim as my own. There is no way for me to satisfactorily end this statement. This isn’t a confession, it isn’t a public relations move, and it damn sure isn’t a shield. It is the truth, though.”
