The University of Delaware will not renew a contract with a professor who posted an offensive and insensitive message about Otto Warmbier, just days after he died.
Katherine Dettwyler, an adjunct professor of anthropology, posted the now-deleted, profanity-laced comment on Facebook, saying that Warmbier “acted like a spoiled, naive, arrogant U.S. college student who had never had to face the consequence of his actions.”
“Otto is typical of the mindset of a lot the young, white, rich, clueless males who come into my classes,” Dettwyler wrote.
Warmbier, a U.S. citizen, returned to the United States in a coma from North Korea and died several days later. He was imprisoned in North Korea, a communist regime, for allegedly removing a propaganda poster from his hotel room. The regime sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor.
The University of Delaware was under fire when Dettwyler’s Facebook post was reported on by the media and issued a statement condemning her words.
“We condemn any and all messages that endorse hatred and convey insensitivity toward a tragic event such as the one that Otto Warmbier and his family suffered,” the statement reads.
The U.S. Department of state holds North Korea “accountable for Otto Warmbier’s unjust imprisonment,” the agency said in a statement.
Dettwyler’s page on RateMyProfessor.com is filled with negative reviews, with some students saying she is unprofessional, offensive, rude, opinionated and blunt. One student’s review says that Dettwyler “hates America.”
Doctors who were treating Warmbier while he was still alive but in a coma said that he suffered a severe neurological injury and was losing tissue in all areas of his brain.
Warmbier was buried during a tearful ceremony in his hometown in Wyoming on June 22.
He was the captain of the soccer team at his high school and gave the salutatorian at the graduation, the New York Post reported.
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