Other scholars of race across the country were more pointed. "I have three words for Rachel Dolezal," said Kinitra D. Brooks, an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio who specializes in black feminist theory: "How dare you?"
Ms. Brooks is one of a number of professors concerned that the controversy might strike a blow at the credibility of black and Africana studies, or at that of the scholars — both white professors and professors of color — who work in those fields.
"As black feminists, we have to work so hard just to be accepted and to have our critical theories considered valid," Ms. Brooks said. "Her falsity can color what so many have previously argued as the supposed illegitimacy of black feminist scholarship."
Not every professor shares that fear. "I don't think there will be any real repercussions for those who do serious, strong work," said Farah Jasmine Griffin, a professor of English and comparative literature and African-American studies at Columbia University. "I think she's done more harm to herself than to serious black women intellectuals."
Ms. Griffin, who is African-American, considers the fascination with Ms. Dolezal "a distraction" from more-pressing matters, like police treatment of black Americans. "The people who don’t take us seriously didn’t need her example to keep doing so," she said.
Martha S. Jones, chair of African-American studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, said there's no shortage of faculty members from diverse racial backgrounds who are doing valuable work in the field of black studies. "What is the value added for a woman who is seemingly white to take on the persona of a black woman?" she asked. "She can do the work without this performance."
What some professors find both insulting and fascinating about that performance is that it has clearly drawn from black-studies scholarship, including Ms. Dolezal's own.
"She’s been reading our scholarship and our commentary," Ms. Jones said. "She knows if there’s an intervention to be made in terms of her presentation of self, it’s the hair. We all read each other, write about hair, and there’s a whole lit about the significance, power, and symbolism of hair for black women. She knows that hair transforms the way we are read. Rachel is a really astute student of race in a curious way."
Tanya Golash-Boza, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California at Merced, who is white, also finds an interesting contradiction in Ms. Dolezal's efforts to pass as black.
"On the one hand, she appears to have a deep understanding of blackness due to her professional, community, and artistic work," Ms. Golash-Boza said. "On the other hand, her understanding of race — and of blackness, in particular — seems quite thin insofar as she seems to believe that a white woman’s performance of and appropriation of blackness is unproblematic."
Anyhoo James Thrasher made a similar point the other day, here: 
but he does appear to 'get' it...
