The Slatest

Oslo University Accepts Mass Killer Anders Breivik Into Political Science Program

Oslo University.

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Scandinavians are very committed to the principles of their society. From Reuters:

Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik won a place on Friday to study at Oslo University from solitary confinement in prison, despite outrage at his massacre of 77 people four years ago.

“He meets the admission requirements. We stick to our rules and he will be admitted,” Oslo University rector Ole Petter Ottersen told Reuters, saying prisoners are eligible to study as long as their academic grades are good enough.

It’s a particularly bold decision given that Breivik has not disavowed or expressed remorse for his almost impossibly horrendous crimes (after setting off a bomb in Oslo and killing eight, he murdered 69 people at a youth summer camp, many of them adolescents).

Breivik will do all his coursework in his cell; he does not have access to the Internet, though he does famously have access to a PlayStation that he has complained is too old.

In a May New Yorker piece, Norway’s Karl Ove Knaussgard described Breivik’s degenerate narcissism and the shattering, shocking effect of his crime on the country’s small, generally tranquil, and close-knit society. “The television broadcasts of the scene were chaotic; the journalists and anchorpeople were just as affected by the events as the people they were interviewing; one read in their eyes and their body language incredulity, shock, confusion,” Knaussgard wrote. “The usual detachment with which news is delivered had collapsed. Indeed, at that moment it seemed as if the world stood open.”