[guest post by JVW]

More drama in the academic racial grievances racket:

A University of California Berkeley associate professor issued an apology Monday for claiming to be Native American after she revealed she had been White her “whole life.”

Elizabeth Hoover was hired at the university in 2020, her LinkedIn profile states, researching Native American food systems, food sovereignty, Native American environmental health movements, and more, according to a university biography page.

In a previous statement from 2022, Hoover stated she grew up believing she was Mohawk on her mother’s side and Mi’kmaq on her father’s but that questions raised about her true identity had prompted her to do genealogical research which resulted in her finding no records of tribal citizenship for any of Hoover’s family members.

“I have brought hurt, harm, and broken trust to the Native community at large, and to specific Native communities I have worked with and lived alongside, and for that, I am deeply sorry,” Hoover’s apology states.

Many on campus are calling for Hoover’s resignation and removal from “all positions on boards and advisory committees and all grants, speaking engagements, and other paid opportunities she obtained with her false identity,” according to a collective statement written by three Berkeley PhD students.

Thus far, there are 375 signatures from various UC Berkeley staff, faculty, students and other community members.

UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore said in a statement that the university is unable to address personnel matters that violate privacy rights.

“We are aware of and support ongoing efforts to achieve restorative justice in a way that acknowledges and addresses the extent to which this matter has caused harm and upset among members of our community,” the statement reads.

Calling on her to resign — why? According to what we have been told over and over by the higher education cartel, scholars like Prof. Hoover are hired because of their outstanding scholarship, not because they check off an important race or ethnicity box. Indeed, California’s Proposition 209 passed by the voters back in 1996 (and reaffirmed by the rejection of Proposition 16 in 2020) specifically outlaws hiring a public employee on the basis of their race. Ergo, even if it turns out that Prof. Hoover really isn’t Native American, that wouldn’t have any effect on her scholarship, which should have been the sole basis of her appointment, right?

It would seem to me that Berkeley finds itself in a sort of conundrum. If they were to fire or even modestly punish Prof. Hoover then wouldn’t that be an outright admission that her claim of Native American heritage was central to her hiring, which would in itself violate state law? Yet if she remains on the faculty then she will be forced to deal with the ire of the woke set who knows how the higher education racket is really played and realizes that Prof. Hoover gamed the system perfectly. She is listed as an Associate Professor on her Cal website, which means that she is tenured. Oh what tangled webs, and all that. It will be fun to see how all of this shakes out, but I hope Professor Elizabeth Hoover has the guts to fight it out and refuse to resign.

But if she chooses to leave academia, she potentially has a bright future ahead of her as a United States Senator.

– JVW