A Cambridge professor has considered resigning from her position following criticism over her recent comments.
Priyamvada Gopal was subject to an article from the Daily Mail following her comments on the Royal Family and on the author of the race report released by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.
Dr Gopal, 51, who teaches in the Faculty of English at Churchill College, rose to public attention when she tweeted: “I’ll say it again. White Lives Don’t Matter. As white lives.” The tweet was deleted by Twitter following public outrage. However, the professor stood by her tweets, saying that they were speaking about the “structure and ideology, not about people”.
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She wrote on Twitter:
At this point the truth is I am pondering giving the Daily Mail what they want–to resign my job from Cambridge & just go, mate, just go. Leave the country. Why not?
Basta already. I am not able to get any work done at all, in which case, really, what is the point?
— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 8, 2021
The tweet was preceded by a Twitter thread in which Dr Gopal expressed her displeasure with the piece.
'Iam a journalist at the Daily Mail writing a piece about you and your recent comments, including that you:
– said this week that the Royal Family was a 'white' institution which had profited from the British Empire'
– last week compared Dr Tony Sewell, the author of the..— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 8, 2021
…Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities race report, to Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels;
– led a Cambridge debate last year in which academics discussed Churchill’s views of "white supremacy" and his "mythic status" in British public life.— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 8, 2021
She also expressed her displeasure with the lack of support that she was receiving from Cambridge University, where she is employed.
What is my employer @Cambridge_Uni doing while the Mail undertakes public racist & misogynist bullying which will again result in calls for me to be dismissed?
Please consider me as flummoxed by this as you. But please do read their moving anti-racist pieties esp after BLM.
— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 8, 2021
The latest outrage over her comments arose after her comments on Tony Sewell, the author of the recently published race report. In her tweets, she questioned Dr Sewell’s credentials and then compared him to Hitler’s propagandist Goebbels.
Am I correct in thinking that it's not, in fact, "Dr" Tony Sewell? I mean, if we are doing to pander to the establishment, then surely the establishment's rules matter.
— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 1, 2021
Okay, established. It is, in fact, Dr Sewell.
Fair enough. Even Dr Goebbels had a research PhD.
— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) April 1, 2021
