Carnegie Mellon University condemned Uju Anya's social media posts after faculty members were doxxed and campus security increased. Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition, drew backlash after X posts resurfaced on Sept. 10.
The university sent three separate statements on Sept. 14, and CMU President Farnam Jahanian and Provost James Garrett Jr. said the department had seen an “influx of threatening messages that leave them feeling distressed and unsafe.” At least one class moved online, and the Department of Language, Culture and Applied Linguistics paused its conversation group meetings.
Sept. 10 X posts
The posts resurfaced after another X user, @TheWuhanClan, shared a screenshot of a 2021 exchange following the death of Rush Limbaugh. In that exchange, Anya allegedly said, “Die first, white man,” and screenshots allegedly from her account also spread widely with posts about Charlie Kirk.
That sequence turned a social media dispute into a campus issue. Carnegie Mellon officials said Anya is on voluntary professional leave through summer of 2027 and is not teaching classes at the school this year.
Carnegie Mellon response
Jahanian and Garrett said Carnegie Mellon “strongly reject language that is hateful and disparages or calls for the harm of others” and said Anya's posts used expletives, racial slurs and derogatory language that “demeaned, dehumanized and intimidated” in a way that violated university community standards.
They also said faculty members had been doxxed, but university police had not identified any credible threats. The gap between those two facts shaped the response: campus security went up even as police did not flag a specific threat, leaving departments to deal with the fallout through precautionary steps.
LCAL meetings paused
Adam van Compernolle, the interim head of Carnegie Mellon's department of languages, cultures and applied linguistics, is tied to the policy framework now guiding the response. The department's community responsibilities policy prohibits harassment, discrimination and disrespect, including on-campus and personal off-campus communication when people can reasonably be seen as representing LCAL, Dietrich College, and Carnegie Mellon University.
For faculty and students, the practical effect is immediate: security is higher, conversation-group meetings are paused, and at least one class has shifted online while the university weighs what action, if any, to take under its own procedures.
