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Carnegie Mellon University associate professor Uju Anya wished Queen Elizabeth II an “excruciating” death after the U.K.’s longest reigning monarch passed away on Sept. 8.
Anya tweeted, saying, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”
Following her tweet, Jeff Bezos called out the professor and said, “this is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow.”
However, the war of words didn’t end there. Soon after Bezos’ response, Anya doubled down by criticizing Bezos for his “merciless greed” and she refused to apologize.
Thousands of students have come forward supporting the professor and signed a petition defending her. It has been signed by over 4,000 professors and students, who say that Queen Elizabeth II was “literally her [Anya’s] colonizer.”
However, the university has distanced itself from the uproar.
Also Read: The 9 Lesser-Known Facts About Queen Elizabeth II
“Free expression is core to the mission of higher education. However, the views she shared in the post do not represent the institution’s values, nor the standards of discourse we seek to foster,” Carnegie Mellon University said.
The petition has criticized the university’s stand on the issue, saying it is “unacceptable,” “dehumanizing,” and “deplorable.”
The petition also says that Bezos’ donations to the university may have influenced its response to the controversy.
“CMU had a choice, and their response was a deliberate betrayal against one of their own highly regarded and respected scholars,” the petition reads. “It has further exposed her to threats of violence.”
“We call on universities to stop being reactive when issues of structural oppression are called to their attention and take its impacts on staff, faculty, students, and families seriously,” it reads.
“Professor Anya’s Twitter clearly states: ‘Views are mine,’ yet her institution took up the charge to admonish a Black woman professor, calling her response to her lived experiences of the real and tangible impacts of colonialism and white supremacy, ‘offensive and objectionable,'” the petition adds.
Photo: Courtesy of Michael Garnett and National Museum of Amer on flickr
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Image and article originally from www.benzinga.com. Read the original article here.