We have yet another academic fired this week for statements made on social media. University of Delaware professor Kathy Dettwyler attracted national criticism over her statement that Otto Warmbier “deserved” to die after being arrested in North Korea. The professor of anthropology will now be denied rehire as an adjunct.
Dettwyler went on her Facebook page and said
“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. And of course, it’s Ottos’ parents who will pay the price for the rest of their lives.”
Dettwyler extended the controversy to her own students by saying “typical of a mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males who come into my classes.”
She asked “Is it wrong of me to think that Otto Warmbier got exactly what he deserved?”
Apparently the University of Delaware believes that the answer is clearly yes.
The school learned that Dettwyler made similar statements as a comment to an article published by the National Review.
The school issued a statement that
“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.”
We have discussed similar cases this week (here and here). Dettwyler was clearly expressing her personal views and was not speaking as part of the university. Again, the university does not say where it draws the line for professors who want to participate in public debates. That leave an uncertain and chilling standard for academics to discuss contemporary political, religious, or social issues.
After the controversy, one student came forward to reveal the Dettwyler once asked on a test whether it was true that President Donald Trump and his supporters “have expressed… a variety of cultural beliefs that are diametrically opposed” to the morals of the U.S. The only answer option was “True.” Dettwyler insisted that no students were penalized for not answering the question.
In an interview with UD Review, Dettwyler defended her test question, saying she never penalized a student for not answering it.
The fact that Dettwyler is an adjunct clearly made it easier for the school. Adjuncts are generally employed year to year or even term to term. They are the ultimate at-will employees. The school can simply say that the entirety of a record is reviewed in hiring or re-hiring. However, it is still incumbent on the school to define its standards and address the free speech and academic freedom concerns raised by such actions.
Dettwylerhas a B.S. in Anthropology from the University of California, Davis and an M.A. and PhD in Anthropology from the Indiana University, Bloomington. She previously taught at the University of Southern Mississippi and Texas A&M.
In her words…I guess she got what she deserved.
I think the University should be thankful they found out she had zero judgment before she got tenure. Just because you have the right to say something does not mean you should say it. You don’t have to say everything you think!
Kathy, the professor of anthropology needs to go on a sabbatical. Perhaps Peru.
Study an Indian tribe in isolation. No hospitals, police, electricity, or internet service down here.
My concern after reading her comments was that I doubted she could or would be fair to the average young, white, male student. Her comments drip prejudice.
Did it occur to you to ask why this grotesque woman was hired in the first place? It’s not as if there’s a seller’s market in academic labor. Anthropology and sociology are two disciplines which impose ideological litmus tests. There’s no other plausible way you get the composition you do in those disciplines without them. Why don’t they drop their ideological litmus test and have a taste-and-decency litmus test? It would not cut out too many current faculty, but it would cut out Kathy Dettwyler.
Dettwyler is reflecting the dominant view of those in her field of anthropology. Jonathan Haidt says the fields of anthropology and sociology are “lost” – consumed by social justice activists.
http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/a-conversation-with-jonathan-haidt/
JONATHAN HAIDT: Anthro is completely lost. I mean, it’s really militant activists. They’ve taken the first step towards censoring Israel. They’re not going to have anything to do with Israeli scholars any more. So it’s now – it’s the seventh victim group. For many years now, there have been six sacred groups. You know, the big three are African-Americans, women and LGBT. That’s where most of the action is. Then there are three other groups: Latinos, Native Americans….
JOHN LEO: You have to say Latinx now.
JONATHAN HAIDT: I do not intend to say that. Latinos, Native Americans, and people with disabilities. So those are the six that have been there for a while. But now we have a seventh–Muslims. Something like 70 or 75 percent of America is now in a protected group. This is a disaster for social science because social science is really hard to begin with. And now you have to try to explain social problems without saying anything that casts any blame on any member of a protected group. And not just moral blame, but causal blame. None of these groups can have done anything that led to their victimization or marginalization.
====
That’s what 40 years of African American Studies; Hispanic Studies; Chicano Studies; Feminist Studies; and Queer Studies taught by far left tenured radicals buys you. Two generations of the brightest people in America indoctrinated to hate white people in general, but especially white straight Christian men.
The implication of his remarks would be that schools without a critical mass of archaeologists, physical anthropologists, and palaeoantrhopologists should discharge their anthropology faculty en bloc, because cultural anthropology is no longer a serious discipline. (The same likely applies to sociologists who are not skilled in quantitative methods).
The academic boycott does not call for not having anything to do with Israelis. It’s an institutional boycott. Individual Israeli scholars who aren’t visiting with institutional Israeli support are not supposed to be boycotted at least going by the guidelines laid down by PACBI.
Zionists, and organized Jewry in general, have been some of the biggest enemies of free speech.
The sanctity of free speech will continue to be defined along with where it gives way to other freedoms, such as the choice of employees. This professor either does or does not fit the description of who the institution wants to teach its kids. You can say anything you want, but you must take the consequences. She illustrated perfectly the situation of the idiot that was captured by the North Koreans. If the stove is hot, you know it’s hot, don’t touch it. He is dead because he put his hand on the stove.
She illustrated perfectly the situation of the idiot that was captured by the North Koreans. If the stove is hot, you know it’s hot, don’t touch it. He is dead because he put his hand on the stove.
Good for you issac. You’ve just made the argument to justify ISIS and every other regime, group or individual that believes it is just to infringe the right to life, liberty and property of anyone they choose. Apparently to you, stupid people deserve whatever harm comes their way. Of course that ideology is what created our weaponized, bureaucratic state.
Congratulations, you’ve completely discredited yourself from any discussion that pertains to rights and the rule of law.
Olly – give issac a break, he’s Canadian you know. 🙂
He masquerades as an enlightened citizen of this republic. The idiocy he regularly displays is breathtaking in that he does not see that he advocates for progressive lawfare, all the while decrying what he perceives as conservative lawfare. If this is what Canada produces then perhaps they too need to be added to the travel ban. 🙂
You don’t expect to die from touching a hot stove–get a burned hand yes, but not a death sentence.
Of course not Sally. One should not expect anyone to be deemed deserving of a beating, getting carjacked or killed for taking the wrong exit off the interstate either. Yet if you’re white, folks like issac and this professor would find this to be social justice. These people are a disgusting example of a dying ideology. They just don’t realize it yet.
So isaac must surely believe that a women who walks in an alley or dresses a certain way deserves to get raped.
If it hadn’t been obvious to him (her) where he (she) was then it is Darwinism.
No Olly
I just reflected on the reality of the situation. The guy doesn’t deserve to die for what he did. However, he made his own choice. If it hadn’t been obvious to him where he was then it is Darwinism. The fact that the institution would not allow an employee of theirs to voice this is the issue. So, back to the issue of free speech, leaving your personal rant out of it.
However, it is still incumbent on the school to define its standards and address the free speech and academic freedom concerns raised by such actions.
Apparently they have by the statement they issued and by terminating her employment.
I’m so glad to hear this professor was fired! I don’t think she was fired for expressing her views, she was fired for her utter lack of empathy for those she was hired to teach! It’s particularly egregious because colleges indoctrinate their students and applicants to believe they must travel “out of their comfort zone.” They intimate that no one is “educated” or “well-rounded” or “worldly” unless they have taken one of these insane trips abroad. If you haven’t risked contracting Ebola, or being caught in a bloody civil war, you are not worthy of their exalted status. This poor kid was only 19 years old! He was guilty of nothing more than being an adolescent! This professor’s comments show she has no empathy for the demographic she was hired to support. She is just a bitter, angry, ranting fool. She definitely got what she deserved! (imho).
As her test question shows, Dr. Dettwyler is a propagandist not a professor. And who needs propagandists teaching students? Not UD, apparently. Maybe she can return to Cal. Davis where she’ll be welcomed as a refugee by the cultural revolutionaries there.
I wonder if the schools are feeling the tide starting to swing back the other way. Main street America has had enough of the clueless academia jumping on board the social justice train. Pat Buchanan has a good write up on the potential belly-up status of Illinois and Puerto Rico, so maybe the schools realize they may need paying students from main street in the future, and having wackos like this don’t help their attractiveness to potential new students. Funny how people and institutions fight the justice battle–until they get hungry…
What a mean thing to say about such a nice young man. 🙂
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I see what you did there.
I am glad somebody got it. 🙂
(But I am about to bite a hole thru my tongue.)
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I don’t know whether he’s a nice young man or not. Neither did Dettwyler. The problem is she extrapolated several conclusions about him based primarily upon his skin color and perhaps partly on his status as a fraternity member (which nowadays functions as little more than a racist dog-whistle epithet). So, of course, he’s a rapist. In a more enlightened time we’d have called her a racist.
“The problem is she extrapolated several conclusions about him based primarily upon his skin color and perhaps partly on his status as a fraternity member … ”
That is such a good point. Several of her quoted remarks clearly indicate stereotypical thought.
Her statements show that she believes that rich, white, clueless, young men share the same characteristics, including frequently raping women, and that as a member of that group, Warmbier is like all the others.
It seems to me that her bigoted reasoning is precisely the kind of thought process that we hope will be mitigated by education.
I think we can be grateful that she will no longer find it so easy to influence young people.
Cruel!
Good!
With those credentials she couldn’t get a full time position?
What was wrong at Texas A&M and Southern Miss?
Dispostion a little too conservative for her tenured brethren?
Another example of an American college wasting tuition and, in this case, taxpayer dollars to pay an idiot. And people wonder why higher education is so expensive. American colleges and universities need to get their houses in order. If the professor does not have the mental wherewithal to educate students, the school should not hire that person.
While I strongly believe that what you say (as opposed to what you do) should not, as a rule, result in discipline, when, as in this case, the professor’s comments demonstrate a complete intellectual failure, that person should not teach.
BTW: what course(s) was she hired to teach, anyway?
BTW: check out the look on the dog’s face. It says “Let me down, lady, so I can run away from home. I don’t want to be associated with this simpleton.”
Free Fifi!!
And in other news tonight…..
Fire the ithcBay and lets move on.
“Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. ”
The thing is, she was doing just fine until this. If she had stopped before the sexual, racism, and calling all white males rapists this wouldn’t have been an issue.
No, she wasn’t. The first two sentences were the usual faculty bitch-moan about their clientele, whom they resent.
“What is particularly interesting is that Dettwyler was not employed by the university when the comments were made.”
it seems to me that comments and behavior prior to employment are fair game to evaluate to determine suitability for the job.
This is her third school teach, and she is still adjunct faculty. She is not making friends.
This is definitely the year of the unhinged.
My apologies to BFM and Paul, I didn’t read the comments first before I posted basically the same thing.
That by itself doesn’t mean anything. I know lots of very talented academics in the same circumstance. I’m not saying she’s one of them by the way. Part of the problem as I see it is schools are wasting resources to pay pseudo-scholars in deadwood departments, which prevents them from hiring real scholars to tenure track positions in departments that produce serious work. E.g. Ethnic studies departments get to hire tenure-track pseudo-scholars to produce “research” to perpetuate victimology narratives which would not see the light of day if they were subject to more rigorous methods of historiography and social science. Meanwhile, departments like history are staffed with over-worked under-paid adjunct profs who deserve better. But you do have a point, the fact that Dettwyler was an adjunct in a deadwood department is telling.