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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: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @04:25PM (3 children)
Oh, not this stupid shit again.
"Freedom of speech" doesn't mean you're immune to consequences of your speech. You don't get to say whatever the fuck you want and then everyone else has to put up with it: they're also free to refuse to associate with you, and by extension to refuse to employ you. If you're an asshole and say shitty things, people won't want to be around you, and they won't want to employ you. That's exactly what happened here.
If I owned a company and you were my employee, and said something nasty, I'd have every right to fire your ass, thanks to right-to-work laws. And I'd do so gladly; I wouldn't want nasty people working for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @05:17PM
You make a good point!
This, I think is the crux of it all but it does show a difference between you and the UD: you don't want nasty people/dickheads working for you because dickheads are dicks. I think that's fair. The UD doesn't want to associate with that individual because it would hamper their fund-raising efforts, not because the person is a nasty.
Once again, consequences are imposed because of financials, not because of common decency. I'm ok with the latter, not with the former.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @06:17PM (1 child)
While this is correct, it comes with one subtle consequence that I think is extremely undesirable.
What this guy said was obviously pretty reprehensible and I think few people would find it acceptable. At the same time, as internet access grows you're left to constantly tip-toe around ever more groups seeking to destroy people who 'offend' them. This [imgur.com] is a picture of the lead scientist behind the Rosetta Project from the ESA. After some groups in a country thousands of miles from where he worked were offended by his shirt, a birthday gift from a friend - a female, he was brought under nonstop harassment until we get to this [imgur.com]. Him breaking down into tears on a live stream paradoxically just incensed the hate mob even more and they used it as a self righteous justification of their behavior, and then took it a notch up and began to try to pressure the ESA to fire him. Because they didn't like his shirt. Take your own post. 5 loaded expletives in about as many sentences. That would easily be enough to get an e-lynch mob fired up against you if you were anybody of import - and if you were not posting pseudononymously.
The natural response here is predictable. 'Well if I was somebody of import, and I was posting under my own name then I'd watch what I said.' This sounds reasonable until you think about it. We live in a mostly hierarchical society. And we've started to create a system where those whose opinions and views matter the most cannot actually publicly state them under their own name. This holds true all the way until the top. The reason people like Trump, or for a less satirical example Markus Persson (billionaire creator of Minecraft), are able to speak their opinion even on controversial matters is because they've reached the point in society where they are effectively on the top of the hieararchy. So we have a society where eccentric billionaires and people nobody cares about can speak their mind freely while everybody else is left worrying if they'll become the next target of a digital lynch mob.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday July 29 2017, @08:53AM
I think this is an issue. The larger communication pool the more idiots and crazies. And it of course expand more if communication doesn't require any skill. Some countermeasures is to make some communication so boring that the crazies fall asleep. Another is to reserve some forums where crazies are prevented from partaking. It can even be as simple as using complex jargon that the general mob won't ever comprehend. General public channels should however always be treated as the pipeline to the cesspool of crazies it is.
If everybody has to top-toe all the time around any issue that anyone on the planet may take an issue with. It makes for a less great and varied society. It's detrimental to development of people and technology. And reminds more about the theological oppression of the middle ages.