A University of Wisconsin graduate student apologized for lying about being black and resigned their teaching job in a Medium post last week.
CV Vitolo-Haddad, a Ph.D. candidate in Journalism and Mass Communication, said in one of two Medium posts that they are actually Southern Italian/Sicilian but went “along with however people saw me,” per The New York Post.
“I am deeply sorry and regretful to the people I deceived by inserting myself into Black organizing spaces I didn’t belong in. That deception was parasitic and harmful. I want to identify those moments and state what I should have done differently,” they wrote. Vitolo-Hadad uses “they” and “them” pronouns.
Antifa grad student, CV Vitolo-Haddad, resigns from teaching position at @UWMadison after being outed as someone who pretended to be a person of color. #HateHoax https://t.co/OfK405XvRr
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 17, 2020
Vitolo-Haddad admits they should have “corrected varied misconceptions about my identity over the years, and for everything I did to aid or advance those ideas.”
Vitolo-Haddad resigned both their position as co-president of the Teaching Assistants Associating and a teaching assistant gig but claims they never spelled out the assumed identity on paper, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Earlier this month, George Washington University Professor Jessica Krug resigned her post after building her career on the premise that she was black. (RELATED: Professor Who Pretended To Be Black Resigns From George Washington University)
“For the better part of my adult life, every move I’ve made, every relationship I’ve formed, has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies,” Krug wrote.
“To an escalating degree over my 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 added.