Elevating a Pretendian connection to an importance equal to academic specialty just aggravates the simmering insult of higher education’s embrace of box checking at the expense of the least successful minority in academia. If Susan Taffe Reed misrepresented herself, that is a character issue.

If Susan Taffe Reed did not misrepresent herself, then you created this controversy with your own press release and you could extricate yourself by throwing some kid in the media office under the bus. Instead, you simultaneously tout her Pretendian connections as reason to celebrate her appointment and claim those connections had nothing to do with her appointment. In the political age of double talk, we expect more of higher education. Et tu, Dartmouth?

Reed has held positions publicly advertised as existing for the purpose of representing the historically unrepresented in higher education.

It is fair to ask, if she never called herself an Indian, how did she come to occupy those positions? There are plenty of white people who support Indian efforts to succeed in academia, so how did she repeatedly stand out from that crowd? She has had nothing to say beyond a general statement that her critics have their facts all wrong. It’s understandable that the numerous academic Pretendians and the institutions that hired them do not want to have that conversation. Et tu, Dartmouth?