SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The University of Delaware is cutting ties with a part-time professor who provoked a controversial firestorm for saying North Korea detainee Otto Warmbier "deserved" to die.
The Newark school said it will not re-hire Katherine Dettwyler, the adjunct faculty member who blasted the 22-year-old student as "young, white, rich, clueless" in a since-deleted Facebook post Tuesday.
The school's statement (pdf):
The comments of Katherine Dettwyler do not reflect the values or position of the University of Delaware. 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 University of Delaware values respect and civility and we are committed to global education and study abroad; therefore, we find these comments particularly distressing and inconsistent with our values. Our sympathies are with the Warmbier family.
Also at; CBS News.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Revek on Friday July 28 2017, @03:02PM (30 children)
You don't deserve to die.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:10PM (18 children)
I agree. But the relevant question here is: Did the part-time professor deserve to be fired for posting that statement?
(Score: 1) by Revek on Friday July 28 2017, @03:13PM (2 children)
Sure. People get fired for less.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday July 28 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)
That something happens does not imply that it should happen.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @01:41AM
Trump! Trump! Trump!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:24PM
Or maybe: Should the University of Delaware re-hire a part-time anthropology professor when they generate negative PR that is inconsistent with their values?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:36PM (2 children)
She is an anthropologist, so I guess she could be a bit of authority on the subject. Looking at her Wikipedia page on what she had said I think people misinterpreted in the way how she meant to say it (more as a warning); she puts it as a question, instead of a statement.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday July 29 2017, @12:40AM (1 child)
That does put it in a different light. OTOH you also need to look at what else she said:
So trying to souvenir some crappy propaganda poster is the same as rape in her eyes?
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday July 29 2017, @01:46AM
I've yet to figure out what, when somebody assigned to the male gender caste does it, isn't rape to feminism (even merely existing).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @04:19PM (9 children)
Yes.
If I had a company and one of my employees wrote something publicly like that, I'd fire their ass. Especially when their public profile clearly says they're an employee of my company: their public comments reflect publicly on my company. Any smart company will eliminate people who are PR disasters.
Heck, even if she just said that at work, I'd think real hard about firing her. I don't want anyone like that around me. I have some pretty negative opinions of Otto myself (young, stupid, naive...), but I would never stoop to saying "he deserved to die"; that's just inhuman. In fact, while I think he was stupid and naive, I can't say I was sagely and wise at that age either. I'm not sure I would have been dumb enough to go to NK and try to steal a poster, but I did some somewhat reckless and ill-considered things in my teens and early 20s, just like most men I'm sure.
Otto was just a naive kid. He didn't deserve to die. This horrible excuse for a woman deserves to be fired though.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:14PM (5 children)
1) You don't have a company so this is a pointless hypothetical. You start off with the statement that you have no clue what you're talking about.
2) You have an inflated sense of self-importance. If you really think that people care what an employee says about you on their own dime/profile and that this is somehow interpreted as "it's the company saying it" or that it carries more weight than when someone else says so, you are even more clueless than you appear at first.
I have a company with an HR department and a policy, I know what I am talking about.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:37PM
Universities are run differently than normal companies. For one reason or another, the University of Delaware decided it cared enough about the PR fallout to not re-hire the professor.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @06:43PM (3 children)
You're an AC, and you claim to own a company with an HR department? I think you're a troll, but here goes anyway:
Would you keep one of your top executives around if they were spouting horrible crap on Facebook or Twitter, with their affiliation with your company prominently displayed? If so, you obviously have no clue how to run a company.
This is a professor, not some janitor or something. Their personal lives do reflect on the university.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @10:16PM (2 children)
I'm an AC, and I own my own company with a HR department, you insensitive clod!! (Different AC, BTW.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @01:50AM (1 child)
Wow! Me three! (Also different AC.) That's amazing! I'll bet all of us ACs own companies with HR departments!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @02:43AM
I identify as a company with an HR department.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 28 2017, @06:23PM (1 child)
Especially considering that the University's product IS this person.
I'm much less likely to want a professor who's publishing stupid crap on the internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @12:20AM
Are you sure about this? Second paper drafts are due next week, and there will be an exam on chapters 5-9.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday July 28 2017, @11:02PM
Just up and fire them? No consideration for the value that this specific individual provides to your company? No consideration for the experience and hard work they put forth? If you are the higher up, no consideration that that this person might be, in a some part, the reason YOU have a job? All over some mindless spew on some retarded innernet web shite. (Hell, the freaking president spews crap on twatter and hasn't gotten fired... yet :P )
Right. Employees are interchangeable like light bulbs. Sure just up and fire them. Bring in some new kid that can't actually deliver the product or service like the they could. Quietly hurt the entire moral of the department. And when your company has to close up shop you will probably take your golden parachute and be completely oblivious to the damage that you did.
A smart company would mitigate the situation. The exact action? Depends on the situation. Warnings, marks on their record, take away their tweeter and facefook privileges, or just telling facebook readers that they just need to get over it? Firing? Hopefully only if it was the last straw in a larger situation.
Sadly there aren't that many smart companies.
The entire story boils down to some trite farce that sounds like "whaaaaa, someone said something on the Internet that I don't agree with!" :D
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:25PM
Absolutely. What bit of academic freedom was being expressed in this egregious display of boorishness?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:13PM
And yet, everyone does.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday July 28 2017, @03:19PM (5 children)
Yeah, the statement was definitely bad. 15 years of hard labor + death for stealing a sign? Gosh..
I wonder if she will be SJW'd now.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 28 2017, @03:25PM (1 child)
I remember thinking when they brought him back in a coma that his surname was a bad omen: "Warm beer."
Death is a crazy high price for tomfoolery, even if you're doing it in an insane asylum like North Korea. The lesson here is don't go to places like that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Friday July 28 2017, @05:40PM
I don't think the kid deserved to die, but I am not surprised by the outcome of his actions.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Friday July 28 2017, @07:04PM (2 children)
Actually, she is a SJW. She didn't chastise the kid of doing what amounts to a suicide (it'd be akin to stealing a cross when the Church was at its most murderous phase), but for "mindset typical for ... white males who come into her class".
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @12:22AM
As opposed to being a SJFWSW? (Social Justice For White Supremacy Warrior?)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 30 2017, @09:30PM
So the SJW got poetic justice? ;)
I know many males can have some anti-social aggressive attitude. But going from that to publicly wishing death from a official position upon a person that has already suffered torture in essence just proves she's not about justice or sane judgement. In fact it hints what people like her will be up to if they get into a real position of power.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:28PM
Being foolish possibly makes it less of a tragedy, though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Friday July 28 2017, @03:53PM (2 children)
You are a carbon based life form, result of millennia of pillage rape violence with a peppering of love and a lot of hard work. You may or may not deserve to die. But you eventually will. Any moral judgement upon people you did not even meet is irrational.
But the topic here is more like: under which conditions a facebook post is reason for termination.
You teach atheism in soviet russia to a beowulf cluster of young students, you post about the wonderful miracles of the apostles in the official school's feed, you get instafired without even needing a piece of paper. Because you are a hypocrite.
You live in a free country, you post from your own page that hitler did nothing wrong, you are entitled to your own opinion and you deserve a barrage of ironic or angry replies and some commie keying your car. If you catch the commie in the act, though, you can kick him in the balls and post the resulting pic too.
Corollary, there are few free countries around.
Each one is free to speak his mind and pay the social/practical consequences of his speeches.
You want to tell me Islam is the best religion ever? 0r that the white race must be defended? all right, duly noted. You want to pray with the ass up, or meet up with your fellow antifa to celebrate the Che's birthday? why not.
But, you want to make me stop showing a crucifix that has been on the wall for centuries? you just declared war on my roots and tradition and hypocritically want to change the very system who is letting you stay here. And war rules are quite different from peacetime rules so, watch your back because you are an illegal soldier, entering without uniform, and the geneva convention does not apply.
Anybody who does not agree with the above is a jerk, BTW.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Friday July 28 2017, @05:34PM (1 child)
I believe in free speech too, but i definitely would not post something stupid on facebook (ANOTHER reason why i am NOT on facebook, lol) because of family:
--my opinions should not worry my employer: what i think is not (necessarily) the thoughts of my employer and should not have any bearing on them (unless you are the CEO, maybe)
--my opinions CAN be a burden on my family, though. What i say CAN reflect on them because there is a much more immediate relationship.
That said, there IS a game you gotta play: you say something nasty, SOMEONE WILL GET THEIR PANTIES IN AN UPROAR and there MAY be consequences.
Here, i feel i can say what i feel, because of pseudo-anonymity and i'm doubting my employer reads soylentnews (barely can work his work computer), but i would not post stupidity on facebook/faceplant: you are just INVITING panty uproar.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 28 2017, @06:15PM
panties . . . I'm listening . . .