George Washington University opens probe after professor Jessica Krug admits she posed as black

The history professor said in a blog post she had been pretending ‘for the better part’ of her adult life

Calling herself a cultural ‘leech’, Krug said she first claimed ‘North African Blackness and then US rooted Blackness’

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US professor Jessica Krug. Photo: Duke University Press/Twitter

Published: 4:18am, 5 Sep 2020Updated: 4:43am, 5 Sep 2020

A US university has launched an investigation after a professor admitted she had lied for years about being black and is in fact white – a stunning admission amid a tense national reckoning on race issues including cultural appropriation.

In a post on the platform Medium, Jessica Krug – a history professor at George Washington University in the US capital focusing on Africa – said she had been pretending “for the better part” of her 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,” she wrote.

Krug, who is light-skinned, said she first claimed “North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness”.

One of her former students told CNN that Krug voiced pride in her Bronx roots, but told another student she was from Puerto Rico.

Jessica Krug is a history professor at George Washington University. Photo: AFP