- Richard Berthold
Dr. Richard Berthold (born 1946) was a tenured professor of classical history at the
University of New Mexico . On the morning ofSeptember 11 ,2001 , while the terrorist attacks were still going on, he told two large freshman classes that "Anybody who blows upthe Pentagon gets my vote." Initially, he only received a reprimand [http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle.com%2Fweekly%2Fv54%2Fi22%2F22a03301.htm] [http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4754] but under pressure from the administration, he retired two years later.Berthold stated that his comments were "a reflection of my disagreement with much of our foreign policy." He also noted that he only referred to the Pentagon, and not the World Trade Center. However, he acknowledged that he made this statement "in an embarrassing moment of insensitivity and stupidity ... when more than a hundred people had just died at the Pentagon."
Dr. Berthold's courses on the
Ancient Near East ,Hellenistic Greece , and others were extremely popular with UNM students. He is commonly regarded as an eccentric and endearing individual, with obvious, notable exceptions.External links
* [http://edition.cnn.com/2001/fyi/teachers.ednews/10/13/academic.chill.ap/ A CNN report on the incident]
* [http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0112/18/nr.00.html A CNN forum]
* [http://hnn.us/articles/1121.html Berthold's defense of his statements]
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