Professor Says Otto Warmbier Deserved to Die


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Published 7 years ago

Published 7 years ago

The University of Delaware said sayonara to a professor who just couldn't stop herself from trash talking the recently deceased American student Otto Warmbier on social media.

Last Tuesday, anthropology professor Kathy Dettwyler thought it would be a good idea to publish the insensitive message "Is it wrong of me to think that Otto Warmbier got exactly what he deserved?" on Facebook, adding that he had the "typical mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males" she encountered on campus.

kathy dettwyler facebook post screenshot deleted

Warmbier, a student from Ohio who was sentenced to 15 years hard labor for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster, tragically died earlier this month just six days after being returned to his family in Ohio. He spent much of his 18 months of imprisonment in a coma, which the North Korean government claims was caused by a sleeping pill he took after contracting botulism.

On Sunday, the University of Delaware released a statement revealing that Dettwyler had not been employed by the university at the time she made the Facebook post and that she "will not be rehired to teach at the University in the future."

Dettwyler hasn't been alone in posting this sort of commentary. Immediately following reports of his death, the official Twitter account for the teen magazine Affinity seemed to excuse North Korea's treatment of Warmbier in a since-deleted tweet, which lead to a wide backlash across the social networking platform.

affinity magazine warmbier tweet deleted screenshot watch whiteness work

And just last week, writer Ranier Maningding wrote an article published on NextShark, which argued that Warmbier didn't deserve sympathy because White actors Seth Rogen and James Franco starred in The Interview, a comedy about two American journalists attempting to assassinate Kim Jong-un.


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