September 09, (THEWILL) – A few days ago, Nigerian-born, US professor, Anya, sent the world into a frenzy when she expressed her heart-felt opinion about the late monarch of England, Queen Elizabeth II while she was on her sick bed.
While rumours of her death was still ongoing, Anya wrote in a tweet, “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying, May her pain be excruciating.”
Jeff Bezos, the third richest man in the world didn’t let the tweet slide, saying, “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow.”
Anya didn’t let Bezos off the hook, after Queen Elizabeth’s death was confirmed, writing: “May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers.
“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.”
Twitter was quick to delete the tweet.
Her university, Carnegie Mellon University, relinquished any liability from her statements. They posted on their social media, “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.”
A literary amazon, Prof Anya, teaches and conducts research in the Modern Languages Department at Carnegie Mellon University, as an associate professor of second language acquisition.
Her primary fields of inquiry are critical applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics and critical discourse studies examining race, gender, sexual, and social class identities in new language learning through the experiences of African-American students.
A very proud lesbian who divorced her husband to practice lesbianism, Prof Anya has expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion in instructional practices and curriculum design, applied linguistics as a practice of social justice, intercultural communication, as well as service-learning and civic engagement in secondary and university level language programs.
Her book Racialised identities in second language learning: Speaking blackness in Brazil (Routledge 2017) won the 2019 American Association for Applied Linguistics First Book Award, recognising a scholar whose first book represents outstanding work that makes an exceptional contribution to the field.
The book is the first single-authored volume of sociolinguistic analysis and critical examination of the African-American experience in language learning. It examines how students shape and negotiate different identities in multilingual contexts, and it proposes how a multilingual approach (e.g. translanguaging, plurilingual practice), can be utilised for effective language pedagogy.
Her second book, a co-edited volume titled Racial equity on college campuses: Connecting research to practice, was released by SUNY Press at the end of 2021.
She was an assistant professor of second language learning in Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State University, assistant professor of teacher education in TESOL at the University of Southern California, visiting assistant professor and faculty director of the Dartmouth College Portuguese, language study abroad program in Salvador-Bahia, Brazil and lecturer in applied linguistics, TESOL, Portuguese, and Spanish at UCLA and Dartmouth College.
She holds a PhD in applied linguistics from UCLA, an MA in Brazilian studies from Brown University, and a BA in Romance languages from Dartmouth College
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