Featured Image Credit: @ujuanya/Twitter/Shutterstock
Topics: The Queen, Royal Family, World News
Aisha Nozari
Topics: The Queen, Royal Family, World News
Dr. Uju Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University, came under fire recently when she wished the Queen ‘excruciating pain’ in death.
Dr. Anya, who made the comment in a now-deleted Twitter post after concerns over the Queen's health first came to light on 8 September, has now elaborated on her remarks, saying Her Majesty was ‘representative of the cult of white womanhood’.
Dr. Anya also urged people to think about ‘how the Queen got her crown’, saying the Royal ‘plundered and looted exploited lands’.
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Speaking to The Cut, Dr. Anya was asked whether or not she thought the backlash to her remark was indicative of the fact that people tend to exclude the Queen from Britain’s colonial legacy.
Dr Anya replied: “Queen Elizabeth was representative of the cult of white womanhood.
"There’s this notion that she was this little-old-lady grandma type with her little hats and her purses and little dogs and everything — as if she inhabited this place or this space in the imaginary, this public image, as someone who didn’t have a hand in the bloodshed of her Crown.”
She continued: “How did she have that Crown? Even the crowns she wears are looted, plundered from the lands they exploited and extracted from. The entire treasury is a legacy of thievery that was achieved by murder, by enslavement, and it didn’t stop after independence.”
Dr Anya also responded to criticism from Jeff Bezos, who responded to her tweet: “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow."
She told the outlet: “Jeff Bezos incited violence against me. He rarely tweets in his own voice, but he took the time to single me out when literally half the planet rejoiced over the news.”
Dr Anya added: “I can’t ignore the racism and misogyny — the emails I’ve been getting all start with the N-word, b***h, genetically inferior, all kinds of things.”
Dr. Anya’s initial tweet read: “I heard the chief monarch of the thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating."
It was removed by Twitter 'for violating the Twitter Rules on abusive behaviour', a company spokesperson told the Intercept.
In a follow-up post, the professor wrote: “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."
Dr. Anya’s place of work, Carnegie Mellon University, was quick to distance itself from her remarks, tweeting: “We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account.
"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."
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