“My university leadership showed very clearly they did not approve of my speech; however, they stand in firm support of my freedom of expression.”
Uju Anya, a language professor at Carnegie Mellon University, says the institution will not take any disciplinary action against her for tweeting vile statements against the late Queen Elizabeth II.
On Tuesday morning, Ms Anya announced her return to Twitter after being suspended for violating the social media platform’s guidelines.
“From what I’ve been told, there is no plan to sanction or fire me, and my job is not in jeopardy. My university leadership showed very clearly they did not approve of my speech; however, they stand in firm support of my freedom of expression on my own personal social media,” Ms Anya tweeted.
The CMU management had distanced itself from Ms Anya’s tweets, which described the late queen as a “wretched woman” and a “genocidal coloniser.”
“We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account,” Carnegie Mellon University tweeted last Thursday. “Freedom of 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.”
Hours before her death was officially announced, Ms Anya wished the queen “an agonizingly painful death like the one she caused for millions of people.”
Ms Anya also tweeted, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”
After many people reported the tweet, Twitter took it down for violating a rule that prohibited “wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm.”
Ms Anya’s attack on the longest-reigning British monarch was part of her deep-seated and often expressed animosity.
On Saturday, Ms Anya accused Ms Elizabeth of sponsoring the “genocide” that led to her family’s displacement in the South-East in an interview with The Cut.
She revealed that half of her family members were killed with weapons given to the Nigerian Army by the British government with the support of the late monarch during the Biafran War.
An estimated two million people were believed killed by the Nigerian troops during an attempt by Ms Anya’s Igbo ethnic group to break away from Nigeria barely seven years after independence.
