In the latest episode of racist, white men doing racist things, a university of New Hampshire chemistry professor has stepped down after being accused of pretending to be a female immigrant of colour and posting racist, sexist, and transphobic rants on Twitter. 

Glen Miller, chair of the chemistry department, said in an October email that a white, male professor had set up the Twitter account and that the tweets varied from “unfortunate to hurtful to deeply offensive“. The identity of the man has yet to be confirmed. 

The now-deleted Twitter account attacked “woke-infected” universities and boasted about “killing my department’s woke statement on social unrest”, following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

A false background was used by the account to challenge other users who were arguing for more diversity in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.

The man behind the Twitter account mostly targeted minority women who disagreed with his opinion and spurred his followers to join him in attacking those who opposed him.

“After the tragic death of George Floyd the wokinistas in my dept felt compelled to make a collective statement. It was a self-flagellating admission of guilt and shame for things we had not done that no sane person would agree to sign,” he wrote, under the alias ‘The Science Femme’.

“I was successful in removing all woke terminology from the statement including anti-racism, white supremacy, white privilege, and claims of systemic racism. This took several weeks and may have permanently burned some bridges, but I think it’s important. It is a toxic ideology that cannot be given an inch,” he said.

The university said the person behind the Twitter account was a member of faculty. He resigned after an investigation spanning four months.

In a letter to the community giving notice of the professor's resignation, university president James Dean Jr said: “While we are limited in what we can say in order to protect the privacy of all involved, we can share that the faculty member chose to resign when the university concluded that the conduct exhibited was not consistent with the university’s values and our expectation that every faculty member contribute to a professional academic environment free of intimidation and harassment.”

In a similar incident from November, Dean Browning, a white Republican politician, tweeted, “I‘m a Black gay guy”, from his official Twitter account. Twitter users quickly accused the politician of having an online alter ego, where he tweets his support for Trump while posing as a gay Black man.