George Washington University has launched an investigation after a professor admitted she had lied for years about being Black and is actually white.

In her latest blog, Jessica Krug, an associate professor of history, said that she had lived most of her adult life eschewing her "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: first North African Blackness, then US rooted Blackness, then Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness."

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

In her blog post, Krug said that her actions were the "very epitome of violence, of thievery and appropriation, of the myriad ways in which non-Black people continue to use and abuse Black identities and cultures."

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In a statement released on Friday, University Provost Brian Blake and Dean Paul Wahlbeck wrote, "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."

 "We want to acknowledge the pain this situation has caused for many in our community," the statement read.

She blamed "unaddressed mental health demons" dating back to childhood, and said that she frequently thought of confessing the deception, "but my cowardice was always more powerful than my ethics."

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Krug's biography on the university's website lists imperialism, colonialism and African-American history among her areas of expertise. Her writings also center heavily on issues of African culture and diaspora.

The professor's public persona came across in a video testimony to a New York City Council hearing on gentrification in June, in which she referred to herself as Jess La Bombalera. At the meeting, Krug talked about her "Black and brown siblings" in the anti-gentrification movement and criticized "all these white New Yorkers" who "did not yield their time to Black and brown indigenous New Yorkers."

Hari Ziyard, editor for the online publication RaceBatr, which had published some of Krug's work, responded to the revelations on Twitter.

Jess Krug "is someone I called a friend up until this morning when she gave me a call admitting to everything written here. She didn't do it out of benevolence. She did it because she had been found out," he wrote.

"In the world of academia, I can only imagine how many more Jessica Krugs and Rachel Dolezals there are that are pretending to be Black women to advance their professional careers," another user tweeted.

Krug's scenario was reminiscent of the case of controversial US activist Rachel Dolezal, who made headlines in 2015 after saying she identified as Black, even though both of her parents are white. "I'm more Black than I am white," Dolezal said at the time.

lc/dj (AP, AFP)