Jessica Krug facts for kids

Jessica Anne Krug (born c. 1982) is an American historian, author, and activist who taught at George Washington University (GWU) from 2012 to 2020, eventually becoming a tenured associate professor of history. Her publications include Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom, which was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize.

In September 2020, Krug revealed that she had misrepresented her race and ethnicity during her career, and resigned from her position at GWU.

Biography

Jessica Anne Krug—who pronounces her surname Cruz (/kruːz/ or /kruːs/, kruuz or kruus in General American)—was raised in a Jewish family in Overland Park, Kansas, in the Kansas City metropolitan area. She attended Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and The Barstow School in Kansas City, a co-ed private college prep school in south Kansas City. She later attended the University of Kansas without claiming to be a person of color before transferring to Portland State University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 2005. In 2012, Krug earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, "one of the nation's most prestigious African-history programs". In 2009, she had been awarded a $45,000 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. Her doctoral adviser there was James Sweet; eventually, when Krug extended her thesis and published it as a book, she did not acknowledge Sweet.

Krug has stated that she lives with unaddressed mental health issues, and that she began to present herself as a light-skinned person of color as a juvenile to escape from trauma and emotional difficulties.

Career

Krug taught university classes in the Washington D.C. area, and lived in East Harlem in New York City. Krug began teaching history at George Washington University (GWU) in 2012. She gained tenure in 2018. As of 2020, she was an associate professor. Krug has authored articles and a book relating to African American history and Latin America. She has published essays in Essence and at the race-exploring website RaceBaitR. Krug received financial support from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture that led to the publication of her book Fugitive Modernities.

Fugitive Modernities

Krug is the author of Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom, a book about the Quiçama people in Angola and within diaspora, especially in Brazil. The book was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. In Fugitive Modernities, Krug engages in a "rigorous examination of identity formation" of Kisama, a mountainous region in Angola that became a destination for those fleeing the slave trade in the late 16th century. Krug's book was the first history of the Kisama region. She argued that "Kisama allows us to imagine a more humane and less brutalized form of interpersonal relationship in which the structures erected by states to constrain us are overcome in favor of shared liberation."

Resignation

Following Krug's disclosure of her misrepresentation, George Washington University's history department asked her to resign her tenured professorship, stating: "With her conduct, Dr. Krug has raised questions about the veracity of her own research and teaching". GWU cancelled her classes after the scandal. Krug had told her colleagues at GWU that she was Afro-Latina, and that she had been raised in the Bronx by a Puerto Rican mother. In her classes, she occasionally used Spanglish and spoke of her Puerto Rican heritage. On September 9, 2020, GWU confirmed that Krug had resigned from the university.

See also

• List of impostors