After the British royal household introduced on Thursday that Queen Elizabeth II was sick, Uju Anya, an affiliate professor at Carnegie Mellon College, tweeted, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is lastly dying. Could her ache be excruciating.”
Anya then went to show a three-hour graduate seminar, not anticipating what would occur subsequent.
Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, noticed her tweet and responded with a judgment that unleashed a firestorm of criticism towards the Nigerian-born educational.
Amazon has donated $2 million to Carnegie Mellon in recent times, and its chief monetary officer, Brian Olsavsky, is an alum of the college. The Chronicle requested Carnegie Mellon if the college’s assertion was influenced by Bezos’ tweet. A spokesperson stated, “There may be merely no fact to that assumption.”
After the tweet on Thursday by the world’s second-wealthiest human, Anya’s went viral for a short while earlier than Twitter deleted it. The social-media community categorised her feedback as “inciting violence” and “focused harassment,” and locked her out of her account.
Carnegie Mellon condemned Anya’s feedback in a statement on Thursday whereas additionally defending”free expression”:
Her tweet, Bezos’ response, and the college’s assertion generated tons of of posts on freedom of speech, donor relations, and on-line harassment.
Anya stated in an interview that Bezos had put a goal on her, shifting tens of millions of his followers to threaten her. “I needed to disable the ‘contact me’ button on my web site as a result of inside half a day there have been tons of of hatred messages,” she stated, describing the phrases as “essentially the most violent you’ll be able to consider.”
She stated she suspects her tweet was singled out due to her identification.
“I caught his consideration due to who I’m. I’m Black, I’m a girl, queer, and left-leaning,” she stated. “Along with that, a few weeks again I attended a celebration the place I met Chris Smalls, the Black man who unionized Amazon. I took an image with him and I tweeted that picture, calling him sensible and highly effective.” She added that she wasn’t suggesting that Bezos has any thought who she is. “However I’m positively positive the people who find themselves paid to comb Chris Smalls’s identify took word {that a} CMU professor was out socializing and selling the person who’s making a whole lot of bother, combating employee exploitation.”
For Anya, the Queen’s dying represents “the dying of an oppressor. Half of the planet was pleased and rejoicing. The Irish dancing, the Indians jubilating,” she stated.
Anya stated she is descended from Nigeria’s Igbo folks, who suffered mass casualties on account of Britain’s function within the Nigerian civil battle. “My mother and father survived, however different members of the family weren’t as fortunate,” she stated.
“‘Colonizer,’ for me, shouldn’t be an summary idea or one thing I learn in historical past books,” Anya stated. “It’s my household’s historical past. A legacy of ache and direct trauma brought on by the British ruler.” She added that she doesn’t separate Queen Elizabeth II “from the selections of the federal government she supervised.”
Carnegie Mellon recruited her in a wave of hiring following George Floyd’s dying in 2020, Anya stated. She was employed, she stated, due to her work in essential race idea, essential race research, and decolonization.
Amid the controversy surrounding her tweet, she obtained help from many colleagues and college students throughout the nation, she stated, together with Carnegie Mellon’s Black Scholar Union. However Anya stated she understands why the college launched a press release distancing itself from her phrases.
“They’re working a enterprise. However I additionally hope they perceive the place I got here from,” she stated. “I’m grateful that my college reiterated my proper to freedom of speech and expression.”
Timothy Verstynen, an affiliate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon, stated that the college ought to create a social-media coverage for the college and implement it constantly.
“As a school member, what I discovered essentially the most irritating was the inconsistency through which the college determined to make statements about what their staff submit on social media,” he stated. Verstynen pointed out that earlier this 12 months a Carnegie Mellon workers member posted feedback about affirmative motion that many discovered offensive, nevertheless it didn’t result in a press release by the college.
“From my perspective, the college is extra thinking about picture than software of ideas. Why did they select to talk up now?” he requested. “The one time they select to make a press release about worker social media, it’s to a queer Black lady, not any of the opposite occasions that college and workers made offensive feedback.”
