1ST AMENDMENT

Carnegie Mellon Gives Professor a Pass for Controversial Queen Tweets

Twitter deleted the tweets for violating the platform’s rules but the university said “free expression is core to the mission of higher education.”

Twitter removed a university professor’s tweets celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s death Thursday but Carnegie Mellon University was not so quick to censor their employee’s views. As the queen dealt with medical issues hours before her death, Uju Anya, a critical race theory professor at Carnegie Mellon, took to Twitter to lament the monarch’s role in “the genocide that massacred” her family in Nigeria. “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating,” she wrote. Twitter said the posts violated their guidelines but the school wrote on its Twitter account, “We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya. Free expression is core to the mission of higher education.” The queen died Thursday at the age of 96.