You may have never heard of Andrea Smith, but she’s a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside, and she’s yet another leftie outed for faking a minority identity. Smith has claimed Cherokee heritage in order to further her career, including research and speeches, as well as founding an organization called INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, a self-described collection of “radical feminists of color.” Additionally, she’s an active member of the Indian group Women of All Red Nations (WARN). But it’s all fake, says The Daily Beast, “as David Cornsilk — a research analyst who did genealogical work for the Cherokee Nation in the late 1980s and has operated his own practice, Cherokee Genealogy Services, since 1990 — can attest. He confirmed to The Daily Beast that Smith reached out to him twice during the 1990s to research her own genealogy. There was no evidence of Cherokee heritage either time.” Cornsilk claims when she came to him the second time, she told him “her employment depended on finding proof of Indian heritage.” That didn’t mean there was proof, though the lack of it didn’t stop her from perpetuating a lie for personal gain.

Her case is reminiscent of Rachel Dolezal, the supposedly “African-American” woman leading the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. When Dolezal’s parents outed her as completely white, the charade was up. But in some ways, Smith is more akin to Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator who likewise claimed Native American ancestry in furthering her own academic career. We suppose it’s all tied to white guilt — some liberals feel so bad about their whiteness they just start pretending they’re not white. And with men identifying as women, who’s to say they’re wrong?