The Carnegie Mellon University, USA, has expressed strong reservation with Uju Anya, a lecturer in its institution, over her remarks regarding the late Queen Elizabeth II of England.
Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday at 96 and was the longest-serving British monarch at the time of her death, having been on the throne for 70 years.
Earlier on Thursday, Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University, in a series of tweets, criticised the late monarch.
The Nigerian-born academic accused Queen Elizabeth II of doing nothing to prevent the “genocide” that led to her family being displaced.
“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating,” she said in a now removed tweet.
In apparent reference to the Biafra war of 1967 to 1970 in which Britain backed the Nigerian federal troops against the breakaway Republic of Biafra, Uju said the late monarch “sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family”.
One of Anya’s tweets criticising the late British monarch has been deleted by Twitter, but one in which she blames Britain for “genocide” is up and has received tens of thousands of mixed reactions.
The university, in reaction to the development, said although it believes in “free expression”, it does not condone the views expressed by the professor.
“We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account,” the post reads.
“Free expression is core to the mission of higher education, however, the views she shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution no the standards of discourse we seek to foster.”
Among those who have reacted to the academic’s tweets is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.
“This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow,” Bezos wrote.