US/World News

U of Delaware prof loses job over Otto Warmbier comments

(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. “The University of Delaware has announced that Katherine Dettwyler, who last taught in the spring as an adjunct faculty member, will not be rehired to teach at the University in the future,” the school announced Sunday in a statement days after the university issued a statement denouncing her remarks.

“Is it wrong of me to think that Otto Warmbier got exactly what he deserved,” Dettwyler said in a post on her Facebook page, which can no longer be accessed online. Warmbier died shortly after returning home in a coma. He had been serving a 15-year sentence of hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster on what North Korea claimed were orders from an Ohio Methodist church.

“These are the same kids who cry about their grades because they didn’t think they’d really have to read and study the material to get a good grade … His parents ultimately are to blame for his growing up thinking he could get away with whatever he wanted. Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. 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.

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