George Washington University has decided to remove a professor from her fall classes following allegations that she is a white woman who has been pretending to be Black.
In a viral Medium post on Thursday, a person purporting to be Jessica A. Krug, an associate professor in the department, said she’d been assuming a false Black identity for much of her adult life.
“Many of you understandably have many questions in the wake of the Medium post by GW faculty member Jessica Krug,” said Provost M. Brian Blake, Provost and Dean of GWU’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Paul Wahlbeck in an email to students. “While the university reviews this situation, Dr. Krug will not be teaching her classes this semester. We are working on developing a number of options for students in those classes, which will be communicated to affected students as soon as possible.”
The history department’s faculty issued a separate statement Friday night, saying they were “shocked and appalled” by the information in the Medium post, and called for Krug’s resignation. They added, “Failing that, the department recommends the rescinding of her tenure and the termination of her appointment.”
The Medium post, which went viral on Thursday, gaining widespread attention online and in news reports, said that Krug has “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,” including “North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness.”
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Krug did not respond to DCist’s request for comment on the Medium post.
Krug’s GWU email address and phone number, which were available on her faculty page on Thursday afternoon, had been removed by that night. According to her bio, she focuses on the politics, ideas, and cultural practices in Africa and the African Diaspora.
Her faculty page also lists her areas of expertise Latin America, African American history, and imperialism and colonialism, among others.
A number of national outlets picked up the story, and many people drew comparisons to Rachel Dolezal, a white woman and former local NAACP president in Spokane, Washington who pretended to be Black. Others who said they were former students or colleagues spoke out on social media.
Hari Ziyad, a Black screenwriter, author, and the editor-in-chief of the online publication RaceBaitr, posted a thread of tweets saying that he had considered Krug a friend until Thursday morning.
Ziyad wrote that Krug had admitted by phone to the information laid out in the Medium post, and continued, “For years I defended her work, and her from her own self-loathing. I did it despite warnings from Black friends, from those who said she wasn’t Black enough even if they could accept that she was Black, and from my own mind and body.”
Aria Sakona, a GWU senior who had a class with Krug this week, said in an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday that she was shocked by the revelations. She said there were a number of Hispanic and first-generation students in the class.
“It just breaks my heart that these students came in, very bright-eyed and eager, to learn about Latin heritage and the history,” she said, adding, “We all placed a lot of trust in her.”
The email from GW’s provost and dean said that “we want to acknowledge the pain this situation has caused for many in our community and recognize that many students, faculty, staff, and alumni are hurting,” and offered support to those impacted.
Krug has taught classes with titles including African History to 1880 and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World. She is also the author of the 2018 book, Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom, which was a finalist for both the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and Harriet Tubman Prize last year.
The Medium post attributed to Krug said that her “continued appropriation of a Black Caribbean identity” was “unethical, immoral, anti-Black, colonial,” and that she had deceived people she was close to.
The post noted that she has been dealing with “unadressed mental health issues,” for which she has been seeking help.
It went on, “But mental health issues can never, will never, neither explain nor justify, neither condone nor excuse, that, in spite of knowing and regularly critiquing any and every non-Black person who appropriates from Black people, my false identity was crafted entirely from the fabric of Black lives.”
This story has been updated to include an email from GWU’s administration stating that Krug has been removed from teaching her classes during the fall semester and a statement from the history department.
