The Carnegie Mellon professor who said she hoped Queen Elizabeth ll faced “excruciating pain” before Her Majesty’s death Thursday (Sept. 8) is drawing criticism from the university and the likes of Jeff Bezos.
Uju Anya, an associate professor of modern languages at Carnegie Mellon, is under fire for her reaction to the palace announcing the queen’s declining health early Thursday.
“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying,” Anya tweeted. “May her pain be excruciating.”
Twitter removed her post for violating its rules of engagement.
Carnegie Mellon then released a statement condemning Anya’s “offensive and objectionable” tweet and accused the professor of violating the university’s “standards of discourse.”
“We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account,” the statement reads. “Free expression is core to the mission of higher education, however, the views she shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution, nor the standards of discourse we seek to foster.”
Anya, however, doubled down on her sentiments and accused Her Majesty of running a government that “massacred and displaced” her family from Nigeria.
“If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star.”
Anya’s social media posts also garnered the attention of Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
“This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow,” he tweeted Thursday.
Amid the controversy, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression urged Carnegie Mellon to refrain from punishing Anya and uphold its commitment to free speech, per the HuffPost.
“We urge CMU to resist public pressure … by refusing to investigate or punish Anya for her protected extramural expression,” the foundation said in a statement.
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