Carnegie Mellon Condemns Professor’s Tweet Wishing Queen an ‘Excruciating’ Death
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Carnegie Mellon University issued a statement late on Thursday condemning one of its faculty member’s commentary on Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
Uju Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon, responded to the death of the queen by tweeting “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.” That tweet has since been taken down by the social media platform, which says it violated its rules.
“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,” continued Anya.
After massive public outcry on behalf of the late Queen, Anya’s employer issued the following statement: “We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account. 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 further celebrated the Queen’s poor health on Thursday by retweeting Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, a University of Michigan associate professor in the school’s Joint Program in English and Education, who observed that “telling the colonized how they should feel about their colonizer’s health and wellness is like telling my people that we ought to worship the Confederacy. ‘Respect the dead’ when we’re all writing these Tweets *in English.* How’d that happen, hm? We just chose this language?”
Telling the colonized how they should feel about their colonizer’s health and wellness is like telling my people that we ought to worship the Confederacy. 😒
“Respect the dead” when we’re all writing these Tweets *in English.* How’d that happen, hm? We just chose this language?
— Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (@Ebonyteach) September 8, 2022
As Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth had little say in how the United Kingdom conducted its foreign policy, and presided over the dissolution of the British Empire as an effective, if not nominal, body.
