Prof who celebrated Queen's death awarded federal grant to teach 'Blackness in Latin America'

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a grant to a professor to teach “Blackness in Latin America,” despite the individual previously making headlines for her 2022 tweet celebrating the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

On her website, Dr. Uju Anya describes herself as “a university professor and researcher in applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies primarily examining race, gender, sexual, and social class identities in new language learning through the experiences of African American students.”

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Anya is an Associate Professor of Second Language Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University, where she teaches courses such as “Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class in Second Language Learning,” “Language Diversity and Cultural Identity,” “Theories of Language Learning and Teaching,” “Hip Hop and Funk Discourses of Black Womanhood in Brazil and the U.S.,” and “Language Program Administration.”

On Sept. 15, Anya announced on X (formerly Twitter) that she was awarded a grant to “create level II of our Spanish language curriculum centering Blackness in Latin America and Black language learners.”

Drs. Melissa Baralt @MelissaBaralt, Aris Clemons @ClemonsAris, Déborah Gómez @DeborahGomezG and I are thrilled to announce we were awarded a US Dept of Ed grant to create level II of our Spanish language curriculum centering Blackness in Latin America and Black language learners! pic.twitter.com/dK0Okl9WQE

— Uju Anya (@UjuAnya) September 15, 2023

The grant, referred to as an “HSI and HBCU collaboration to create open access Spanish language curricula celebrating Blackness in Latin America,” awards Anya, as well as professors Melissa Baralt, Aris Clemons, and Deborah Gomez, with $180,000 to complete their initiatives in this area of study.

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Campus Reform has previously reported on Anya, who took to Twitter after the passing of the Queen of England in September 2022 to celebrate the late monarch’s passing.

“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 tweeted.

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.

— Uju Anya (@UjuAnya) September 8, 2022

Baralt, an associate professor at Florida International University, describes herself as an “[a]pplied psycholinguist studying bilingual language development [...] and the best supports for language learners, teachers and parents.”

Clemons, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, researches “race making and language performance in educational contexts.”

Gómez, an assistant professor of Spanish at Florida Memorial University, describes herself as “[t]raumatized by communism. Inspired by feminism.”

Campus Reform has reached out to Anya, the U.S. Department of Education, and all other professors and schools listed for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.