Rutgers University professor Deepa Kumar found herself in the eye of a storm over a tweet in which she compared the United States to the Islamic State after a website highlighted the post months after it had been posted.
The professor in the US university of Indian origin in her tweet had compared the number of killings by the IS to the casualties in the war led by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a tweeted dated 26 March she had said:
Yes ISIS is brutal, but US is more so, 1.3 million killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan #NoToWar @democracynow http://t.co/fjaszeKTYD
— Deepa Kumar (@ProfessorKumar) March 26, 2015
Thought the numbers provided in her tweet were accurate, Kumar was subjected to severe criticism by many.
Her tweet was highlighted this week by socawlege.com , which describes it as “As her writings and Twitter timeline suggest, Kumar holds views that are anti-American, anti-Israel, and also Marxist in nature.”
The article in the website went on to severely criticise Kumar’s view saying , “Well Professor Kumar, that’s like saying a person who accidentally killed two people in a car crash is more “brutal” than someone who violently murdered an innocent to death.”
Kumar was also targeted by right-leaning TV channel Fox News. News India Times reports , “Fox News in its popular day-time show “Outnumbered” on July 27, featured a discussion on Kumar’s tweet where Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox’s senior judicial analyst, and several panelists panned Kumar, but agreed she had the right to hold and express her views. The comments however, went further, questioning whether it was right for a publicly funded university to hire professors with these seemingly anti-American views, a paradoxical argument for and against free speech.”
Meanwhile Twitter users called her hypocritical and even crazy:
@davidowen_sd @ProfessorKumar @democracynow @AcharyaS holy shit deepa is insane - why would she live in U.S. then? Hypocrisy
— rashid s. (@RashidSaif_R) March 27, 2015
@sh_arjun @ProfessorKumar @democracynow WOW!! The nerve of this person.
— ex machina (@MejiaSouth) April 2, 2015