Whether you have strong political opinions on monarchies or not, it does seem a bit crass (to say the least) to publicly state that you hope the Queen suffered ‘excruciating pain’ in her final days.
Unfortunately, these were the sentiments of Dr. Uju Anya, professor of linguistics and race at Carnegie Mellon University, who Tweeted the following hours before the Queen died:
The Tweet kicked up an absolute sh*t storm on Twitter, to the point that Twitter ended up deleting it with a claim that it had violated their community guidelines. Still, millions of people saw it, and Uju Anya was receiving all kinds of backlash from users promising to report her to her employers, the media and… police (lol).
Even Jeff Bezos got involved:
Anya fired back at him:
Which might be a fair point re Bezos. I mean he’s probably dreading the day that he dies and the workers whom he denied toilet breaks have a field day on Twitter about it. Then again he’s probably making investments in all the latest health technology to avoid that.
I digress. Anya followed that up with another Tweet aimed at everyone gunning her in general:
In any case, Uju Anya’s distasteful comments about the Queen may yet have devastating effects on her career as an educator. There’s a change.org petition against her after she allegedly used an ethnic slur in her tweets. The petition, started by Foundational Black American students, says:
“Dr. Uju Anya can not be allowed to use the platform of Carnegie Mellon University Department of Modern Languages to further promote Systematic Racism through her blatant use of Ethnic Slurs on Social Media when referring to Foundational Black Americans.
This is a step backward in our fight to destroy Systematic Racism and Discrimination for all people if institutions allow professors to become comfortable with using language as a weapon against people of color by people of color.”
Meanwhile, the university where she is employed issued this 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.”
Will she live to regret that Tweet? Time will tell…
For the time Prince Philip’s death brought out the most ruthless trolls on the internet, click HERE.
