Just because you're clever and an academic doesn't mean you can't subscribe to the nuttiest of conspiracy theories.
Professor accused Sandy Hook parents of lying
Will Pavia New York
Published at 12:01AM, December 18 2015
A university in Florida has said that it will sack a professor who claimed that the massacre of 20 elementary schoolchildren in Connecticut in 2012 was a government-sponsored hoax.
James Tracy, an assistant professor at Florida Atlantic who teaches courses on the media, has advanced a series of theories about recent gun massacres in the US, suggesting that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged to advance gun control measures. He has portrayed the parents of the children who were murdered as conspirators who solicited “contributions from generous yet misinformed Americans”.
Veronique and Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah, six, was killed, said that Dr Tracy had demanded from them “proof that Noah once lived, that we were his parents and that we were the rightful owners of his photographic image”.
In an article in the Sun Sentinel last week, the couple called for his dismissal, arguing that he had achieved fame “among the morbid and deranged precisely because his theories were attached to his academic credentials”.
Florida Atlantic said that Dr Tracy had been given notice that the university would seek to end his tenure. Mr and Mrs Pozner were “relieved that truth and honour prevailed”, they said.
On his blog, Dr Tracey wrote that a thorough re-examination of “the facts” of Sandy Hook could reveal a scandal “tantamount to the next Watergate”.
