Recently someone criticized me for suggesting that there are those on the political left whose rhetoric is just as damaging as those on the right. In response to this critic I offer the case of Uju Anya, a professor of modern languages at Carnegie Mellon University.
Here is Yahoo News:
A professor at Carnegie Mellon University drew criticism on social media after wishing England’s Queen Elizabeth “excruciating pain” hours before she died on Thursday.
“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying,” Carnegie Mellon University Professor Uju Anya tweeted on Thursday morning. “May her pain be excruciating.”
The Twitter post came as reports began to circulate that the 96-year-old monarch’s health was deteriorating and doctors were “concerned” about her condition.
The tweet, which was re-tweeted and liked over 10,000 times on Twitter in just a few hours, prompted strong pushback from many users on Twitter…
Anya, listed as an associate professor of second language acquisition on the Carnegie Mellon website, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
“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 later tweeted.
Hours after the tweet was posted, Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth has died.
“The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon,” the royal family shared on its website. “The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.”
Carnegie Mellon University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital but posted a message on social media regarding the controversy.
“We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account,” the university posted on Twitter. “Free expression is core to the mission of higher education, however, the views she shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution, nor the standards of discourse we seek to foster.”
Read the entire piece here.
If you want a more thoughtful and nuanced response, the kind of response rooted in history rather than activism, check out historian Maya Jasanoff’s piece at The New York Times. Here is a taste of “Mourn the Queen, Not the Empire.”
Those who heralded a second Elizabethan age hoped Elizabeth II would sustain British greatness; instead, it was the era of the empire’s implosion. She will be remembered for her tireless dedication to her job, whose future she attempted to secure by stripping the disgraced Prince Andrew of his roles and resolving the question of Queen Camilla’s title. Yet it was a position so closely linked to the British Empire that even as the world transformed around her, myths of imperial benevolence persisted. The new king now has an opportunity to make a real historical impact by scaling back royal pomp and updating Britain’s monarchy to be more like those of Scandinavia. That would be an end to celebrate.
Read the entire piece here.
I was hoping you would be taking this one on in the blog. I appreciate your call to a “more thoughtful and nuanced response.” Still, however, Dr. Anya’s tweet, along with CMU’s response, raise a number of interesting questions. Is any university truly committed, in practice, to free speech in the way that CMU is claiming to be? Does the monarch bear responsibility for the actions of the empire, or is this just a case of hysterical, modern day Jacobinism?( I am particularly wondering if they would defend the free speech of their adjuncts in the same way.) For me, Dr. Anya’s words make me think of Elvis Costello’s song, “Tramp the Dirt Down,” in which he anticipates celebrating the eventual death of the now-late, former British P.M. Margaret Thatcher. Costello’s words are no less biting than those of Dr. Anya. “When England was the whore of the world,” he writes, “Margaret was her madame,” promising that when she dies, he will “stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down.” I have always loved this song as much as I detest Thatcher’s record and policies. So why do I feel such outrage at Dr. Anya’s wish for the suffering of Elizabeth? Here lies what are, for me, more troubling questions. Have I silenced my own outrage at Costello because I love his music? Am I outraged at Dr. Anya’s tweet because of some implicit racism? Or, is it simply that Costello’s acerbic vitriol is more effectively directed at someone whose actions can actually be directly connected to tyrannical imperialism? The academic in me hopes it is the latter of these. Thanks again for taking on this loaded issue.
Thanks for this thoughtful and honest response, Earl.