Prior to the Queen Elizabeth's passing on Thursday, Carnegie Mellon professor Uju Anya wished Queen Elizabeth II "excruciating" pain, drawing ire from the Pittsburgh school and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The tweet, which was removed by Twitter for violating its standards, wrote:
“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”
Anya, who is from Nigeria, previously stated that she would stand by her comments. Nigeria was ruled by the British until 1960. She claimed that the queen was in charge of a government "that murdered and exiled half my family."
Anya is an associate professor of modern languages at Carnegie Mellon, where she has been criticized for sending "offensive and objectionable messages" and for flouting the "standards of discourse we seek to foster."
Carnegie Mellon issued a statement, posting it to their Twitter:
But why was Jeff Bezos involved? Apparently Carnegie Mellon received a large grant from the tech company to fund a computer science academy—a grant worth $2 million USD. Bezos' tweet referencing Anya's now-deleted tweet kicked off the scuffle.
As this involved a monarch, a professor saying things and being censored by their university, and Jeff Bezos, the opinions on Twitter were flying.
Many people agreed that the comment was in poor taste, but not that it violated Twitter's content standards or deserved to be pulled down.
Others got into arguments about the lasting legacy of the British empire, colonization that occurred during the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II, arguing that Anya's comments were valid, coming from a person with her background, or not, as she was merely a mostly-symbolic monarch.
Some pointed out the double standard of the leaving up the anti-Monarchy celebrations of the queen's death by (mostly white) Irish citizens, while singling out this one Nigerian professor for censure.
Or even just tweets with more explicit violence that were not about a monarch.
On Bezos' involvement, people were quick to point out the issues present in Carnegie Mellon's quick response to a large donor's criticism of one of their faculty members.
People appeared torn between thinking the tweet in question was made in understandable outrage or was in terrible taste, but it seemed that no one appreciated how responsive the university was to Bezos, or the hypocrisy's in Twitter pulling this one tweet.
The debate continues over on Twitter, as many commenters can't resist the allure of a quagmire of opinions involving this many hot-button and outrage-inducing issues all at once.
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@sadcommunistdog; @froglok/Bluesky