UPDATE: University professors come out in support of tweet calling for ‘excruciating pain’ regarding the death of Queen Elizabeth II
The petition blamed the English monarch for ‘sit[ting] on a throne of Indigenous and Black blood.’
Campus Reform previously reported on Dr. Anya’s tweet and her subsequent replies to Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos.
Multiple university professors and faculty co-authored a letter and petition in support of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) associate professor Dr. Uju Anya’s tweet that called for Queen Elizabeth II’s death to be “excruciating.”
Professors from Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburg, Stony Brook University, Northwestern University, and the University of South Florida criticized Twitter for removing Anya’s tweet and CMU for calling her tweet “offensive and objectionable.”
The authors condemned the English monarch for “sit[ting] on a throne of Indigenous and Black blood, embedded in the overall legacy of the British monarchy, her actual government presided over and directly facilitated the genocide that Dr. Anya’s parents and siblings barely survived.”
Campus Reform previously reported on Dr. Anya’s tweet and her subsequent replies to Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos eventually ending with her hurling a Nigerian insult “Otoro gba gbue gi” which roughly translates to “May you pass away from excessive stools.”
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Several of the professors who co-authored the letter and accompanying petition have a history of advocating for training and research on critical race theory, colonialism, white supremacy, and anti-racism.
One of the authors, University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Nelson Flores is an associate professor whose expertise includes “Latinx education, Race and racialization, and Raciolinguistic ideologies.”
Nelson’s current research involves “contemporary classification and reclassification processes for students officially classified as English Learners within broader colonial histories that continue to frame many racialized bilingual students as lacking proficiency in any language,” according to his bio.
Another signee, assistant professor Dr. Chelsey Carter, teaches Public Health at Yale University. Some of her publications include “Racist Monuments are killing us” and “Trauma at home: A queer Black feminist's experience in the afterlife of state‐sanctioned violence in Ferguson.”
Dr. Sirry Alang is an associate professor at the University of Pittsburg. She also helped author the letter in defense of Dr. Anya.
Dr. Alang’s research focuses on the “development of the personal and institutional capacity to effectively engage in anti-racist practice and policy/program development necessary to improve the health of Black populations.”
Stony Brook University's associate professor Dr. Crystal Fleming is the author of the 2018 book How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy and the Racial Divide.
The book’s summary states, “Centuries after our nation was founded on genocide, settler colonialism, and slavery…[s]earing, sobering, and urgently needed, How to Be Less Stupid About Race is a truth bomb for your racist relative, friend, or boss, and a call to action for everyone who wants to challenge white supremacy and intersectional oppression.”
At the time this article was written the petition had 3,947 signatures.
Campus Reform contacted every person and university mentioned. This article will be updated accordingly.
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