A Change.org petition urging the dismissal of English professor Priyamvada Gopal from the University of Cambridge over her “racist and hateful” statement has been removed from the website after being signed by more than 20,000 people, according to Breitbart.
The plea to remove Gopal was created following the professor’s tweets on 23 June.
"I'll say it again. White lives don't matter. As white lives”, she wrote in a now-removed post. Gopal then added: “Abolish whiteness”.
The professor was then briefly suspended from the platform but later re-emerged to insist that she stood by her tweets “now deleted by Twitter”.
She also reiterated to Cambridgeshire Live that “whiteness isn't the reason lives should matter. Lives do matter, but not because they are white. I say the same thing about my own community”.
Following the creation of an online petition urging her ouster, Gopal said that she was “not personally especially fussed” by it but suggested that it could be reported “for harassment” on the platform. She also added that remarks under the petition were “a wonderful tale of white supremacy triggered”.
The University of Cambridge, however, defended the professor’s right to express “lawful opinion” and promoted her to a “full Professorship” despite the scandal her tweets caused.
Gopal’s promotion came shortly after Burnley Football Club supporter Jake Hepple, who flew a “White Lives Matter” banner over a match at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, got fired from his job at Lancashire-based Paradigm Precision for the stunt. Burnley described Hepple’s action as “offensive” and reiterated its support for the Black Lives Matter campaign.