Thousands support Pa. professor who wished Queen Elizabeth a painful death

Nearly 4,000 people have signed a petition in support of a Carnegie Mellon University professor who tweeted about wishing that Queen Elizabeth II ’s death would be “excruciating,” according to KDKA.

Uju Anya, a professor in CMU’s department of modern languages, posted the following message to her personal Twitter account on Thursday: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving and raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”

Twitter removed the tweet, saying the tweet “violated the Twitter Rules.” Then, hours later, CMU posted a statement on Twitter, saying the school “did not condone the offensive and objectionable messages” posted on her personal account.

“Free expression is core to the mission of higher education,” the statement read, “however, the views she shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution, nor the standards of discourse we seek to foster.”

Now, according to KDKA, a petition has circulated, calling the university’s response unacceptable and touching on the Nigerian scholar’s experience with the atrocities committed by the British empire.

“Universities must be intentional about how they respond to public discourse and critically evaluate who they are targeting and/or harming by their response or lack of response,” the petition, in part, reads. “We call on universities to stop being reactive when issues of structural oppression are called to their attention and take seriously its impacts on staff, faculty, students, and families.”