UC Riverside Prof. Will Get Retirement Instead of Prosecution After Lying About Native American Identity

University of California, Riverside is in the hot seat for allowing a faux Native American professor to teach Native American Studies, despite complaints from co-workers going back to 2008.

Ethnic studies professor Andrea Smith has been publicly criticized for her contested claims of Cherokee heritage for at least 15 years, Inside Higher Ed reported. Despite this, she remained employed as a prominent Native American Studies scholar.

Let me wager a guess – Andrea Smith is a Democrat. If she was Libertarian, Conservative or a Republican, she would have been run out of the college back in 2008, when the first complaints were made. “Smith’s identity came under a microscope in 2008 after she was rejected for tenure at the University of Michigan, though she soon landed at Riverside, the NY Times reported.”

It took an actual member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians and fellow UCR Professor to make a complaint resulting in Smith’s eventual resignation.

“But the condemnations have led to a turning point. According to a ‘separation agreement and release of all claims’ shared on social media Thursday, she is resigning from the University of California, Riverside, next August after 13 faculty members at Riverside alleged a year ago that she ‘made fraudulent claims to Native American identity in violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct provisions concerning academic integrity.’”

UC Riverside just negotiated the deal with Smith to “avoid the substantial expense and inconvenience of further administrative or legal proceedings…”  She will be allowed “on staff” through August 2024, when she will “retire” with her retirement in tact.

The university even payed her legal fees of $5,000.

“…as part of the agreement signed in January, the university won’t probe the faculty complaint and Riverside will pony up as much as $5,000 for Smith toward any legal costs tied to resolving the complaint, the Times reported.”

This brings back memories of Fauxcahontas, aka U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. The New York Post reported in 2012:

Warren, an Oklahoma native, was going nowhere in her career until she began “checking the box,” claiming to be an Indian with absolutely no evidence. Once she began listing herself in a minority law-school directory as a woman of color, she catapulted first to the University of Pennsylvania law school, and then to Harvard.

And as soon as she had tenure, Warren abruptly stopped listing herself as a Native-American. Now she claims she’s “Okie to her toes.”

Warren stuck with “I am Cherokee” even after taking a genealogy test which found one Native American ancestor in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations. She claimed the genealogy test provided “strong evidence” of Native American heritage.

I harken back to 1979 when I was applying to several California colleges and universities. My very anglo name and heritage (Irish/Welsh) prevented me from any affirmative action consideration, or CalGrants. I pled with my father, “Why couldn’t you have named me Swift Antelope?”

Little did I know that I was on to something.

There was also Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who portrayed herself as black, even heading up a local chapter of the NAACP in Washington state, and collecting approximately $9,000 in welfare food and child care assistance, CNN reported in 2018.

Despite the backlash and legal troubles, Dolezal continued to insist she is a “transracial” black woman.

As for Prof. Andrea Smith, The agreement says that the university, upon receiving the complaint, “engaged Professor Smith in discussions on informal resolution” but did not launch a “formal university investigation” or make findings on the allegations.

The agreement also says “Professor Smith agrees to not make any affirmative claims of Native American heritage in connection with her university work for the duration of her university employment. However, if asked about her heritage in connection with her university work, Professor Smith is permitted to disclose her opinion on her Native American heritage.”

Fraud is fraud: an intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right.

Professor Smith is a fraud and should have been prosecuted – instead she was rewarded. This deal between UCR and Smith is no punishment at all and more evidence of the stupid people running everything in this state.