Jessica A. Krug, a white history professor at George Washington University, resigned from her post following claims that she has spent nearly her entire adult life (and her professional career) pretending to be Black. Krug’s name was attributed to a viral Medium post last week that said she had been falsely claiming a Black identity, including “North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness.”
George Washington University provost and executive vice president of academic affairs M. Brian Blake and Paul Wahlbeck, dean of the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, announced Krug’s resignation in an email to the school community on Wednesday.
The email said her classes will be taught by other members of the faculty, and that students in her classes would “receive additional information this week.” Blake and Wahlbeck encouraged students impacted by the revelations in the post to take advantage of the school’s counseling and support services. GWU also shared the news on Twitter.
Neither Krug nor GWU have confirmed that the Medium post was in fact written by Krug, but the backlash—at the university and among those who knew her in activist circles—has been swift.
Last week, the university’s history department called for Krug’s resignation or termination after the post drew widespread attention on social media and in national news outlets, writing that they were “shocked and appalled” by the information.
The post shocked other members of the GWU community, including Krug’s students, some of whom had class with her as recently as last week. “I was going to ask her for a letter of recommendation because I’m applying for grad school this fall,” Rebecca Amadi, one of Krug’s former students told The Cut last week. “That’s how highly I thought of her.”
She added, “For her to have built her entire persona on a lie is just so deeply hurtful, but also it’s coming to the point where it’s just like, Oh yes, of course a white woman will go and try to trick all these Black and Brown students.”
Luke Sciutto, another former student, told the publication: “She was very critical of all of our work and a very harsh grader. It left us all feeling like, what are we doing wrong? It always felt a little bit overdone. When this came out, obviously I was surprised, but at the same time, there was something always off.”
The Medium post attributed to Krug said she had “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,” and that her life had been “rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies.”
The post also said she had been battling mental health issues, and expressed remorse for her behavior. Krug has not responded to DCist’s request for comment. At GWU, she taught African and Latin American history, among other courses.
Her 2018 book, Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom, was a finalist for both the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and Harriet Tubman Prize last year.
