Thousands defend professor who wished Queen Elizabeth II an ‘excruciating’ death

Hundreds of teachers and college students signed a petition defending a Carnegie Mellon College professor who wished Queen Elizabeth an “excruciating” loss of life hours earlier than she handed away final week.

Prof. Uju Anya, a Nigerian-American language professor, tweeted Thursday that “the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is lastly dying.” 

“Could her ache be excruciating,” Anya added, drawing a backlash from critics together with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. 

The petition defending Anya, which had been signed almost 4,000 occasions as of Monday afternoon, defends her by saying that Queen Elizabeth II was “actually her colonizer.”

CMU has sought to distance itself from Anya, releasing an announcement Thursday calling her tweets “offensive and objectionable.”

“Free expression is core to the mission of upper training, nonetheless, the views she shared completely don’t symbolize the values of the establishment, nor the requirements of discourse we search to foster,” the Pittsburgh college mentioned. 

The Pittsburgh school has not mentioned whether or not it’s going to sever ties with Anya.

The petition defending Anya criticizes CMU’s assertion as “unacceptable,” “dehumanizing” and “deplorable.”

It additionally claims that earlier donations Bezos has made to CMU might have influenced the college’s response to the controversy. 

“CMU had a alternative and their response was a deliberate betrayal towards one in every of their very own extremely regarded and revered students,” the petition reads. “It has additional uncovered her to threats of violence.” 

“Professor Anya’s Twitter clearly states: ‘Views are mine,’” the petition provides. “But her establishment took up the cost to admonish a Black girl professor, calling her response to her lived experiences of the realand tangibleimpacts of colonialism and white supremacy, ‘offensive and objectionable.’” 

“We name on universities to cease being reactive when problems with structural oppression are known as to their consideration and take severely its impacts on workers, college, college students and households,” it reads.

Anya and CMU didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.