A white Philadelphia teacher and activist has admitted lying about her identity for years, falsely claiming Palestinian and Black heritage while working with Palestinian and racial justice organizations.
Hannah Gann admitted last week in a statement on Instagram that she has no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage and described herself as a “white woman of significant privilege and wealth.”
In a follow-up video, Gann said she was beginning to try to take accountability and asked that no one judge the groups she worked with based on her lies. She said she deceived “everyone” in her life.
“There is not a single person on this planet, no friend, no fellow organizer, no one in my family, no professional connection, no secret op or handler who knew what I was doing,” she said. “I hid my family’s background from everyone in Philly, and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.”
Commenters on Gann’s original post dubbed her the “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal” and “Temu Rachel Dolezal,” a reference to the former NAACP chapter president who pretended to be Black. Dolezal, who legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016, was outed by her parents as being “Caucasian by birth.”
“I still believe in every cause I ever supported, in the ongoing fight for justice and in the righteousness of liberation for all oppressed peoples,” Gann said in the video. “I still believe that theirs is the real story and mine is just a sick, deluded distraction.”
Gann declined to comment further to NBC News on Wednesday, referring to her video as her only public statement.
Another Philadelphia teacher, Keziah Ridgeway, posted her own video Saturday saying Gann deceived her over their nearly decadelong friendship. Ridgeway said that when the two of them met around 2018, she had no awareness of Gann’s actual background — only that Gann was “speaking up for the Black community, for the Palestinian community.”
It was not until 2023, Ridgeway said, that Gann — after a trip she described as being to “Israel/Palestine” — told her she had Palestinian Jewish ancestry and Muslim relatives.
On Labor Day, Ridgeway said, she received a message from a non-Palestinian member of the Philly Palestine Coalition that said that Gann had been pretending to be Palestinian, that the claim was false and that the group planned to release a statement after a meeting that Sunday.
Gann denied the allegations when Ridgeway confronted her, according to Ridgeway, before she offered more details — claiming that her father’s father died when her father was 13 and that she was raised by a Palestinian Jewish woman. Ridgeway said Gann’s grandfather died when her father was 23.
Ridgeway, who wasn’t a member of the coalition and couldn’t attend its meeting, later reviewed the group’s report on Gann. She said she confronted Gann again last week, asking her to call her father so Ridgeway could question him directly.
“She hung up on her father and snapped at me when I tried to ask another question,” Ridgeway said. “And in that moment, I realized that her father didn’t know, her family didn’t know that she was here in this city, lying about being a Black woman to her students, about being Palestinian, and nobody in her family knew the truth.”
Gann addressed Ridgeway’s video in her own, saying, “Everything she said is true, and I fully corroborate.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that it had obtained a copy of the coalition’s report on Gann, which found that the grandfather she claimed was Palestinian-born was actually born in Baltimore. The report also said she had family members living in Israel.
The Philly Palestine Coalition did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment Wednesday.
The Inquirer identified Gann as a teacher at the Workshop School, a Philadelphia School District high school. A district spokesperson said in a statement that the district was aware of social media posts concerning a district employee and her involvement in an outside advocacy organization.
“These posts reference the employee’s involvement in an external group,” the statement said. “The district is making support available to The Workshop School staff and students, as needed.”
Two organizations, Philly Educators for Palestine and the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, said in a joint statement Friday that they were “stunned, saddened and angered by this betrayal.”
“Members met with Hannah and questioned her on her background on Thursday and after over an hour of discussion, Hannah finally admitted she lied,” the statement said.
The groups said they asked Gann to publicly acknowledge that she “is a white woman of Jewish heritage and an Israeli settler family.” They said that they would no longer work with her and that she was not welcome in their spaces. The statement acknowledged the harm and expressed hope that people who had worked with Gann in good faith would not be discredited as a result.
“We will not allow her actions to distract us from our purpose or fracture the community we’ve worked hard to build,” the organizations said.
