Author Archives: pappp

Historian Jessica Krug, who last week admitted to being white and faking being Black for her entire career, resigned from her associate professorship at George Washington University, effective immediately, the institution announced Wednesday.

But on the heels of her scandal comes another confession of racial fraud from a scholar. This time it’s a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison -- where Krug got her own Ph.D.

The graduate student in question is CV Vitolo-Haddad, a Ph.D. candidate in journalism and mass communication. They (Vitolo-Haddad's preferred pronoun) were outed last week via an anonymous post on Medium and subsequently wrote two posts of their own on the platform.

Vitolo-Haddad described their own actions as letting "guesses about my ancestry become answers I wanted but couldn’t prove" and allowing people to "make assumptions when I should have corrected them."

“I am so deeply sorry for the ways you are hurting right now because of me,” Vitolo-Haddad wrote in their first public apology. “You have expressed confusion, shock, betrayal, anger, and mistrust. All of those things are a consequence of how I have navigated our relationships and the spaces we share.”

In the second, edited apology, Vitolo-Haddad described themself as "Southern Italian/Sicilian." In trying to make sense of their experiences with race, "I grossly misstepped and placed myself in positions to be trusted on false premises. I went along with however people saw me."

On social media, spanning years, however, Vitolo-Haddad has described themself as other than white -- in various ways.

This summer, for instance, Vitolo-Haddad described themself as “italo habesha,” meaning of Italian and Eritrean or Ethiopian descent, and “lightskin,” according to screenshots included in the anonymous post outing them.

Several posts are also in Spanish, and allude to Latinx and/or Afro-Latinx ancestry. Tweeting about Krug just last week, they said that their mother described them as Cuban and that the “colorism we uphold and lean into to distance ourselves is actually why no one trusts.” Ironically, in retrospect, they called Krug a “Kansas cracker” who got a Ph.D. in “performing blackface.” They also described “transraciality” as “violence.”

In another 2017 post, Vitolo-Haddad wrote that their mother faulted them for not having enough burning sage to keep their dog “safe from los espíritus malignos,” or evil spirits. The post also seems to say that their mother is a “bruja,” or witch.

Other posts refer to their family’s history of being “colonized.”

The anonymous author of the Medium post says that Vitolo-Haddad is from a white, affluent Italian American family that lives in Florida. Haddad, according to the post, is a name Vitolo-Haddad kept from their past marriage. The author -- described only as an affiliate of Madison -- notes that Krug also described herself as having different nonwhite backgrounds, including North African and Afro-Latinx.

"Though their claim to a POC identity was vague, the one consistency was their insistence that they were a constant target of acts of racism and that they came from some kind of nonwhite background," the anonymous author wrote, accusing Vitolo-Haddad of changing their appearance over time to appear nonwhite. "They referenced it frequently on social media and in interpersonal conversations. Their behavior was reminiscent of the way people who knew Krug have described her: perpetually in a victim status, but also perpetually shifting in terms of the specifics. Their stories lacked coherence, but they intimated an insider status that made (and makes) people hesitant to question them."

Vitolo-Haddad’s initial apology said that they were stepping down from all positions of organizational power at Madison, including their co-presidency of the Teaching Assistants’ Association and their teaching position.

Vitolo-Haddad did not agree to an interview request. Asked via email whether they would remain at Madison as a student only, with no teaching responsibilities, they said, “Those I harmed will be the ones to determine the consequences.”

The now former George Washington professor, Krug, has blamed her actions on past trauma and mental health issues. She may have benefited from her mimicry academically, though, and her critics are demanding a full accounting of that. At Portland State University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree, for instance, she was part of the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program. The program is for underrepresented students, including first-generation and low-income, but also minority students.

Krug, who did not respond to an interview request, is from a white Jewish family and went to a private preparatory school near Kansas City, Mo. A former classmate of hers there, Quinton Lucas -- now the mayor of Kansas City, Mo. -- recently retweeted a yearbook photo of them together, writing, “One of the stranger person-in-your-yearbook-photo-did-this stories I’ve stumbled upon. Yes, Jessica graduated a few years ahead of me. She was interesting back then, but it is really surprising she’s tried to pass as Black for 20 years. Her apology in reflection is warranted.”

More Questions Than Answers

What about Vitolo-Haddad? They said Wednesday via email that while they benefited “socially” in certain ways from the situation, they never applied for scholarships, fellowships or awards for people of color or identified as Black on any forms asking about their identification. They also said they’d never represented themself as Black in their published scholarship, which includes work on the rhetorical strategies of far-right groups.

Vitolo-Haddad directed further questions to the second apology post, which says there were “three separate instances,” otherwise unspecified, when they were asked if they were Black but did not say no. They apologized for entering Black organizing spaces and for “failing to correct varied misconceptions about my identity over the years, and for everything I did to aid or advance those ideas.”

In particular, they said, “I want to apologize for ever taking lies about Cuban roots at face value,” though it’s unclear to what they are referring. “Additionally, I want to apologize for how my failure to own up to these harmful decisions publicly made every conversation on social media about the varied ways I’ve been racialized a source of confusion and deception.”

Meredith Mcglone, spokesperson for Madison, said that the university “expects that people represent themselves authentically and accurately in all aspects of their academic work.” She confirmed that Vitolo-Haddad is “not currently employed as a teaching assistant.”

Regarding Krug's degree status, Mcglone said, "We have policies in place to investigate and address misconduct." Federal student privacy law limits what the university is able to share about current and former students without their consent, she added.

Conversations about Krug have resurrected other stories about faking racial identities in the academy.

Andrea Smith, professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, has long faced accusations that she is not really Native American, but she said in 2015 that she identifies as Cherokee even if she isn’t enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. That same year, Rachel Dolezal, former Spokane, Wash., NAACP chairperson and an adjunct instructor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, was outed as being white. Dolezal later wrote a memoir about how she still identified as Black. That wasn’t always the case, though; in 2002, Dolezal unsuccessfully sued Howard University for allegedly discriminating against her as a white master of fine arts student there.

In 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren shared genetic test results showing that she is in fact part Native American while simultaneously insisting that she's always been evaluated professionally, as a professor of a law, as a white person.

More recently, the family of the late Cuban writer H. G. Carrillo, who died of COVID-19, said he was not actually Cuban at all, but rather born to a non-Latinx Black family in Detroit. In a connection to the Krug case, Carrillo was an assistant professor of English at George Washington.

Actress Mindy Kaling’s brother, Vijay Chokal-Ingam, has written about why he faked being Black to get into medical school, which he eventually dropped out of. Chokal-Ingam says he benefited from affirmative action in admissions decisions but, to his surprise, faced discrimination in other areas of his life while he faked being Black.

Krug’s departmental colleagues called for her resignation or ouster. She had already ceased teaching prior to her resignation.

Vitolo-Haddad in the second confession post said, "What I know now is that perception is not reality. Race is not flat, it is a social construct rife with contradictions. Fighting racism never required dissociating myself from whiteness. In fact, it derailed the cause by centering my experience." 

While "most of the trust I destroyed cannot be rebuilt," they said, they seek "redress that is appropriate for each individual I’ve harmed.” This will be a “long-term and ongoing process, prioritizing those most directly impacted. I won’t pretend to know what that looks like, but I am committed to being part of it until the end.”

In a controversial decision, the University of Southern California replaced a professor of business communication with another instructor in one of his classes for saying a Chinese word that sounds like an English slur.

Late last month, Greg Patton, the professor, was teaching a lesson on “filler words” in other languages -- think “err,” “um” or “like” in English -- in his master’s-level course on communication for management.

“Taking a break between ideas can help bring the audience in,” Patton said, according to a recording of one of the Zoom course sections and a transcription that appeared next to him on screen. “In China,” for instance, he continued, “the common pause word is ‘that that that.’ So in China it might be ne ga, ne ga, ne ga.”

Patton, who has worked in China but is not a scholar of Chinese, did not warn students that 那个, or ne ga, (alternatively spelled nà ge and nèige) sounds something like the N-word -- which it does. And some or all of the Black students across three sections of the course were offended by what they’d heard. So they wrote a letter to the dean of the Marshall School of Business, Geoffrey Garrett, among others, describing Patton as insensitive and incapable of teaching the three-week intensive communications course.

“The way we heard it in class was indicative of a much more hurtful word with tremendous implications for the Black community,” wrote the students, who identified themselves as Black M.B.A. Candidates c/o 2022. “There are over 10,000 characters in the Chinese written language and to use this phrase, a clear synonym with this derogatory N-Word term, is hurtful and unacceptable to our USC Marshall community. The negligence and disregard displayed by our professor was very clear in today’s class.”

The students said some of them had voiced their concern to Patton during his lecture, but that he’d used the word in following class sections anyway. They also said they’d reached out to fellow Chinese students, who “confirmed that the pronunciation of this word is much different than what Professor Patton described in class. The word is most commonly used with a pause in between both syllables.”

Less than a week into their graduate school journey, the students added, “were made to feel less than … We are burdened to fight with our existence in society, in the workplace, and in America. We should not be made to fight for our sense of peace and mental well-being at Marshall.”

Several days later, Garrett, dean of the business school, sent students an email saying that Patton was being replaced as instructor of the course, effective immediately.

“It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students,” Garrett wrote. Patton “repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry.”

While the change was presumably applauded by those students who urged action against Patton, his effective suspension from teaching the course angered many other students and alumni.

One petition for Patton’s reinstatement with thousands of signatures says, “For him to be censored simply because a Chinese word sounds like an English pejorative term is a mistake and is not appropriate, especially given the educational setting. It also dismisses the fact that Chinese is a real language and has its own pronunciations that have no relation to English.”

Ninety-four Marshall alumni, many of whom are Chinese and now live in China, wrote their own letter to the dean and other administrators, expressing support for Patton.

“All of us have gained enormous benefit from the academic leadership of Prof. Patton. His caring, wisdom and inclusiveness were a hallmark of our educational experience and growth at USC and the foundation of our continued success in the years following,” the named alumni wrote.

Moreover, they said, “We unanimously recognize Prof. Patton’s use of ‘na ge’ as an accurate rendition of common Chinese use, and an entirely appropriate and quite effective illustration of the use of pauses. Prof. Patton used this example and hundreds of others in our classes over the years, providing richness, relevance and real world impact.”

The Black students’ letter says that “in light of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the recent and continued collective protests and social awakening across the nation, we cannot let this stand.”

The alumni letter invoked another context: China’s Cultural Revolution, through which some signers said they lived, as well as many of their parents.

“The current incident, and Marshall’s response so far, seem disturbingly similar to prevalent behavior in China at that time -- spurious accusations against innocent people, which escalated into institutional insanity,” the 94 alumni wrote.

The school said in a statement that “We acknowledge the historical, cultural and harmful impact of racist language.” Not naming Patton by name, it said “the faculty member agreed to take a short term pause while we are reviewing to better understand the situation and to take any appropriate next steps. Another instructor is now teaching the class.”

USC is “committed to building a culture of respect and dignity where all members of our community can feel safe, supported and can thrive,” according to the statement. “We have a thorough process for responding to reports and offering supportive measures to any student, faculty or staff member who requests assistance.”

Matthew Simmons, a spokesperson for the business school, declined to answer additional questions about the case but said that Patton wasn’t “suspended from teaching. He is taking a pause while another professor teaches that one course, but he continues to teach his others.”

Even if Marshall doesn’t consider it a suspension, the American Association of University Professors maintains that removing a professor from the classroom prior to a hearing before a faculty body is a severe punishment that should be reserved for serious safety threats.

“Removal from even a single class can, of course, pose serious complications for the faculty member’s standing as a teacher,” says an AAUP report on the “use and abuse” of faculty suspensions. “Suspension usually implies an extremely negative judgment, for which the basis remains untested in the absence of a hearing, even though an administration may claim that it is saving the faculty member embarrassment. That potential embarrassment must be risked (or at least the faculty member should be permitted to risk it) if the individual is to have a chance of clearing his or her name.”

Patton did not agree to be interviewed. In a letter to the Marshall Graduate Student Association’s executive board, he offered “another deep apology for the discomfort and pain that I have caused members of our community. My intent has always been to provide a dynamic, diverse and supportive learning environment and I recently learned this has not always been the case.”

Explaining what happened from his point of view, Patton said that he’s taught the course in question for 10 years and the Chinese filler-word example he’d used “was given to me by several international students several years back.” The inclusion of other languages in the course is “part of a deep and sustained effort at inclusion as I have reached out to find and include many international, global, diverse, female, broad and inclusive leadership examples and illustrations to enhance communication and interpersonal skill in our global workplace.”

Patton also wrote that his example partially inspired by his own years working in Shanghai, “having not taken language courses.” Given the difference in “sounds, accent, context and language,” he added, “I did not connect this in the moment to any English words and certainly not any racial slur.”

The students' letter accuses Patton of starting and stopping the Zoom recording at suspicious times during his lecture. "In other words, he was aware of the grave and inappropriate nature of the example and purposefully chose to leave it out of his Zoom recording for the session," it says. Patton in his letter again denies that he had any ill intent. He is also in the habit of stopping his Zoom recordings on a regular basis to avoid taping transition moments and breakout discussions, for students who will watch the lectures later.

While the letter of complaint said that “several students during the lecture brought up this inappropriate use of Na-Ga,” Patton wrote that only one student reached out to him after his third class session of the day.

Patton also said that preliminary course evaluations were coincidentally happening that same day. Among the “student feedback from the three sections were three comments that reference the particular illustration,” he said. “When I read them, my heart dropped, and I have felt terrible ever since.”

Patton said he emailed the entire program to apologize and apologized again the next morning.

“I was willing to look at whatever I could do, personally and organizationally, to help the students and their classmates heal,” he said, adding that he’s since learned that past students may have had similar concerns.

Patton’s case has captured significant attention from news media and commentators, with the latter generally describing the university’s response as excessive and chilling to free expression.

David French, a political journalist and former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and columnist for Time, wrote on Twitter, for example, that if “anyone thinks they're helping the cause of racial equality by engaging in absurd, over-the-top speech policing of innocent people, then they're sadly mistaken.”

The case is a unique twist on the debates surrounding saying the N-word in the classroom when it appears in class texts. Some scholars believe that saying “N-word” instead of the full slur when it appears in literature or, say, a legal case, amounts of censorship. Other professors say that “N-word” gets the point across as effectively as the full word without compromising the pedagogical environment, including the trust between professor and students.