Delaware Professor Fired For Slamming ‘Spoiled’ Otto Warmbier
American student Otto Warmbier was imprisoned in North Korea for over a year. Image by youtube
(JTA) — An adjunct professor at the University of Delaware who said American Jewish college student Otto Warmbier “got exactly what he deserved” will not be rehired to teach at the university.
Katherine Dettwyler, who teaches anthropology, criticized Warmbier on social media and in the comments section of an article published on the National Review website.
Warmbier was detained in North Korea for over a year and died shortly after returning home in a coma.
“Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women,” the professor said. “Not so much in North Korea.”
She also posted that Warmbier behaved like a “spoiled, naive, arrogant U.S. college student who never had to face the consequences of his actions” while he was in North Korea.
Throughout negotiations to return Warmbier home, the family did not disclose that he was Jewish so as not to antagonize North Korea, which believed he was affiliated with the church.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
