Professors Come Out in Support of Carnegie Mellon Prof Who Wished Queen Elizabeth II an ‘Excruciating’ Death

Thousands of university professors have signed an open letter in support of Carnegie Mellon University professor Uju Anya, who called Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II a “wretched woman” and a “genocidal colonizer,” adding, “may her pain be excruciating” in reaction to the news of the Queen’s poor health shortly before her death last week.

In their letter, the professors doubled down on Anya’s comments, writing that Queen Elizabeth II had sat “on a throne of Indigenous and Black blood, embedded in the overall legacy of the British monarchy,” and that “her actual government presided over and directly facilitated the genocide that Dr. Anya’s parents and siblings barely survived.”

Professor Anya had tweeted, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”

In a follow-up tweet, the professor added, “That wretched woman and her bloodthirsty throne have fucked generations of my ancestors on both sides of the family, and she supervised a government that sponsored the genocide my parents and siblings survived. May she die in agony.”

“Dr. Anya tweeted her feelings about the queen’s death,” the letter read. “As a Black woman who was born in Nigeria, whose family has been directly harmed by the insidious impacts of British imperialism, genocide, and white supremacy, Dr. Anya expressed her pain on her personal Twitter account.”

The letter, which referred to Anya as a “world-renowned” professor, was written by professors Chelsey R. Carter of Yale University, Nelson Flores of University of Pennsylvania, Sirry Alang of University of Pittsburgh, Crystal M. Fleming of Stony Brook University, and Adia Benton of Northwestern University, and postdoctoral fellow Dick Powis of University of South Florida.

“While within public discourse, the term ‘colonizer’ can appear to be an abstract term that people have only read about in history books, Dr. Anya experienced the reverberations of colonial white supremacy first hand,” the letter continued.

The letter went on to claim that “Queen Elizabeth II was not figuratively but literally her colonizer, and the colonizer of millions of people across the world — and particularly countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and Indian Ocean territories.”

“Over the course of more than 70 years, the imperial reign of Queen Elizabeth II was inextricably tied to the legacy of the British Empire’s commitment to white supremacy and colonialism,” the professor insisted in their letter.

The professors went on to attack Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who reacted to Anya’s tweet, writing, “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow.”

This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow. https://t.co/2zoi6CdFMq

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) September 8, 2022

Anya had responded to Bezos by tweeting “Otoro gba gbue gi” at him, which reportedly translates to “May you pass away from excessive stools.”

“May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers,” she added.

Otoro gba gbue gi.

May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers.

— Uju Anya (@UjuAnya) September 8, 2022

In their letter, the professors accused Bezos of “vilify[ing]” Anya, and attacking “a Black Nigerian-Trinidadian-American Professor.”

The letter also alleged that Bezos himself is “not dissimilar to the British monarchy’s colonial project,” claiming that he “simply remixed the colonial schema through neoliberal racial capitalism, exploitation, and greed.”

The professors also blamed Bezos for Carnegie Mellon University condemning Anya’s tweets about Queen Elizabeth II, pointing out that the Amazon founder has donated to the university.

“This financial paper trail is highly relevant to Professor Anya’s treatment and the university’s subsequent statement,” the letter read. “Now, Dr. Anya faces violent threats, harassment, and abuse.”

“Her institution took up the charge to admonish a Black woman professor, calling her response to her lived experiences of the real and tangible impacts of colonialism and white supremacy, ‘offensive and objectionable,'” the professors lamented.

“This is unacceptable and dehumanizing,” they added.

The letter concluded by urging Carnegie Mellon officials to show “actionable support” towards professor Anya, and “to consider what harms are both elided from critical discourse and reproduced in the classroom when they choose to stand on the side of the oppressor.”

More than 4,000 individuals signed the professors’ letter.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.