# Nutbag Sandy Hook Denying Tenured Professor finally fired **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 18, 2016, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413 "2016-02-18T04:24:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/1 "2016-02-18T04:24:35Z")
Justice is finally served. I suppose tenure protected him up to now. [Florida Professor Who Cast Doubt on Mass Shootings Is Fired](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/us/florida-professor-who-cast-doubt-on-mass-shootings-is-fired.html?_r=0) > [@](#): > > MIAMI — A Florida Atlantic University professor who suggested in blog postings and radio interviews that the 2012 massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary and other mass shootings were a hoax designed by the Obama administration to boost support for gun control was fired Tuesday. > > James F. Tracy, 50, a tenured associate professor of communications at the Boca Raton university, has repeatedly called into question the authenticity of recent mass shootings, including the slaying of churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., and office workers in San Bernardino, Calif. In his blog postings and radio interviews, Mr. Tracy has said the Newtown massacre may have been carried out by “crisis actors” employed by the Obama administration. > [@](#): > > Florida Atlantic University, which first reprimanded Mr. Tracy in 2013, dismissed him less than a month after the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the shooting at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn., publicly accused the professor of harassment in a Sun Sentinel opinion piece. Lenny and Veronique Pozner, angered by Mr. Tracy’s conspiracy theories, had asked Mr. Tracy to remove a photograph of Noah from his blog, Memory Hole. In return, Mr. Tracy sent them a certified letter demanding proof that Noah ever lived and that the Pozners were his parents. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/2 "2016-02-18T05:34:13Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Justice is finally served. I suppose tenure protected him up to now. > [Florida Professor Who Cast Doubt on Mass Shootings Is Fired](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/us/florida-professor-who-cast-doubt-on-mass-shootings-is-fired.html?_r=0) You do know that his firing had nothing to do with his idiotic views, right? From your link: > [@](#): > > Florida Atlantic University ultimately dismissed him on grounds that have nothing to do with his theories or his feud with the Pozners. They said Mr. Tracy, who because of his tenure could not be easily fired, had failed to submit paperwork for three years in a row that listed any other jobs or similar activities that he performed outside the university. In a letter to Mr. Tracy, the university said it repeatedly asked him to file the form — which should have listed his blog and his work on a weekly radio show — but Mr. Tracy declined to do so. > > “It is the responsibility of the employee to report outside activity on activity forms so that the administration can address potential, actual, or perceived conflicts of commitment or interest,” wrote Diane Alperin, the university’s vice provost. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/3 "2016-02-18T08:10:11Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > You do know that his firing had nothing to do with his idiotic views, right? From your link: Now, the official reason is “failure to submit paperwork”… But I somehow doubt that the kooky views of the professor in question did have zero influence on the decision to fire him. The University probably couldn’t fire him because of his tenure… And must have been looking _hard_ for some excuse (ideally tenure-related) to get rid of him. ---
**Author:** ![MoonMoon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonmoon/32/2959_2.png) [@MoonMoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoonMoon)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/4 "2016-02-18T13:34:17Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > You do know that his firing had nothing to do with his idiotic views, right? From your link: It’s not uncommon that the reason a person is fired and the _stated_ reason a person is fired are not the same thing at all. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/5 "2016-02-18T14:04:16Z")
Good riddance. People like this are inhumanly cruel. Did you see where he was using one of the dead children’s pictures on his blog and accused the parents, in a certified letter, of faking their own son’s death, and actually being actors and not even having a child? And I too agree that the reason for his firing is not the same as the cause for firing. Isn’t the famous of Al Capone being arrested for failure to pay income taxes? ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/6 "2016-02-18T15:05:36Z")
> [@MoonMoon](#): > > It’s not uncommon that the reason a person is fired and the _stated_ reason a person is fired are not the same thing at all. What?! And all those guys aren’t “stepping down to spend more time with their families”?! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/7 "2016-02-18T16:53:25Z")
This could be a good career move for ex-Prof. Tracy. He can now make paid appearances and sell books on the basis that he was persecuted and fired for Speaking Truth To Power. Ex-TV news correspondent Sharyl (“My Stuck Delete Key Means My Computer Was Hacked!”) Attkisson is a prime example of this phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2016, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/8 "2016-02-18T20:32:57Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > What?! And all those guys aren’t “stepping down to spend more time with their families”?! 😉 Of course not, silly! Some of them are “pursuing other opportunities”. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/9 "2016-02-20T11:05:34Z")
> [@Doctor\_Jackson](#): > > Of course not, silly! Some of them are “pursuing other opportunities”. Yeah the opportunity to collect the golden handshake … having been paid to leave… ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/10 "2016-02-20T16:39:48Z")
The guy’s utterly reprehensible. But firing somebody for doing something that’s got zippo to do with his job performance is BS. Especially when it amounts to chilling his \*off-duty \*free speech, idiotic and hateful thought it may be. If he spent his off-duty time dissing his employer that’d be utterly different. Likewise if he couldn’t conduct classes because his off-duty behavior had attracted so much controversy that classes were disrupted with protest and media and the whole circus. That’d be a clear cut fireable offense for failure to do the job. This, not so much. The good news is the guy is enough of a me-first wacko that he finally gave them enough rope to plausibly hang him with. As a Union worker we have a saying: “Live by the contract; die by the contract.” IOW, if you want to hold management’s feet to the fire on legalistic technicalities, you’d better be damn sure your own technicalities are in perfect order. Lest ye be smitten by them. In accordance with the contract. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/11 "2016-02-20T16:43:08Z")
No, that’s bullshit. Part of any employee’s job is to not make their employer look like a complete jackass. He was an embarrassment to the university and had to be removed. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/12 "2016-02-20T17:36:54Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > No, that’s bullshit. Part of any employee’s job is to not make their employer look like a complete jackass. He was an embarrassment to the university and had to be removed. I don’t know. At my university, we had (and stlll have) a [Holocaust denier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Butz) (Arthur Butz) who is an electrical engineering professor. I thought the whole point of academic tenure was intellectual freedom. The university president (who is Jewish himself), at the time, said: “Butz is a tenured associate professor in electrical engineering. Like all faculty members, he is entitled to express his personal views, including on his personal web pages, as long as he does not represent such opinions as the views of the University. Butz has made clear that his opinions are his own and at no time has he discussed those views in class or made them part of his class curriculum. Therefore, we cannot take action based on the content of what Butz says regarding the Holocaust - however odious it may be - without undermining the vital principle of intellectual freedom that all academic institutions serve to protect.” I tend to be on the side of the professor in this case, but it appears the university fired him for other reasons, at least officially. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2016, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/13 "2016-02-21T09:57:24Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I don’t know. At my university, we had (and stlll have) a [Holocaust denier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Butz) (Arthur Butz) who is an electrical engineering professor. I thought the whole point of academic tenure was intellectual freedom. The university president (who is Jewish himself), at the time, said: “Butz is a tenured associate professor in electrical engineering. Like all faculty members, he is entitled to express his personal views, including on his personal web pages, as long as he does not represent such opinions as the views of the University. Butz has made clear that his opinions are his own and at no time has he discussed those views in class or made them part of his class curriculum. Therefore, we cannot take action based on the content of what Butz says regarding the Holocaust - however odious it may be - without undermining the vital principle of intellectual freedom that all academic institutions serve to protect.” > > I tend to be on the side of the professor in this case, but it appears the university fired him for other reasons, at least officially. I concur. It would be like any poster on this board being fired from their jobs because the company didn’t like what was posted by them. Let that happen, and see how many of the self-righteous here would call that ‘justice’. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2016, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/14 "2016-02-21T14:02:59Z")
I don’t understand why the prof couldn’t’ve been canned for one of his actions which did directly relate to his asinine “conspiracy theory”; to wit: harassing the parents of one of the murdered children. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2016, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/15 "2016-02-21T14:11:19Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > I don’t understand why the prof couldn’t’ve been canned for one of his actions which did directly relate to his asinine “conspiracy theory”; to wit: harassing the parents of one of the murdered children. Was he harassing the parents as a FAU professor or as a private asshole? ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/16 "2016-02-21T16:42:18Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Was he harassing the parents as a FAU professor or as a private asshole? Doesn’t really matter, does it? AIUI, harassment can be a crime. His level of doucheitudinal harassment certainly appears to me to be at the criminal level. Profs can be canned for criminal behavior, right? ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2016, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/17 "2016-02-21T17:38:50Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The guy’s utterly reprehensible. > > But firing somebody for doing something that’s got zippo to do with his job performance is BS. I agree that he’s reprehensible. But he brings that to the job and his students. What kind of teacher can he be if he believes in utter bullshit? It has much more than ‘zippo’. His thoughts showed that he may very well be imbalanced. For a teacher/professor that is certainly a reason to fire him. It shows a complete disconnect from reality. If you LSL, as a big iron driver held such beliefs, a complete disconnect from reality, I would be concerned about getting on your plane. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2016, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/18 "2016-02-21T23:17:14Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Doesn’t really matter, does it? AIUI, harassment can be a crime. His level of doucheitudinal harassment certainly appears to me to be at the criminal level. Profs can be canned for criminal behavior, right? Given some of the quotes in the article, wasn’t he effectively, even if not legally, libeling them too? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/19 "2016-02-22T01:47:07Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > I agree that he’s reprehensible. But he brings that to the job and his students. What kind of teacher can he be if he believes in utter bullshit? > > It has much more than ‘zippo’. His thoughts showed that he may very well be imbalanced. For a teacher/professor that is certainly a reason to fire him. It shows a complete disconnect from reality. > > If you LSL, as a big iron driver held such beliefs, a complete disconnect from reality, I would be concerned about getting on your plane. I would be real worried about anybody with such loonie beliefs doing my job too. Although I have worked with a few CT enthusiast / survivalist types. Not way out there, but well off the mainstream. My employer has written policies that give them leave to fire you over anything you do that puts them in a bad light in public. If that prof worked for my employer in any capacity, even janitor, he’d have been unemployed the same day his behavior made its first headline. My “defense” is aimed at the special case of college professors. (Although I didn’t say that in my first post so you couldn’t have known that.) In our society they, like journalists, occupy a special place that deserves extra freedom from suppressive oversight. Which of course means more risk of loonies, fringe science, and yellow journalism having a pulpit. But what we get as a free society in return from academic and press freedom is well worth it. Given the relatively small number of loonies. Ideally their extra freedom would give them an extra sense of responsibility as well. Humans being what they are, that’s usually true but not always. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/20 "2016-02-22T04:46:56Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > My “defense” is aimed at the special case of college professors. (Although I didn’t say that in my first post so you couldn’t have known that.) > > In our society they, like journalists, occupy a special place that deserves extra freedom from suppressive oversight. Which of course means more risk of loonies, fringe science, and yellow journalism having a pulpit. But what we get as a free society in return from academic and press freedom is well worth it. Given the relatively small number of loonies. > > Ideally their extra freedom would give them an extra sense of responsibility as well. Humans being what they are, that’s usually true but not always. Well, there’s the whole bit about this particular loon actually harassing the parents of one of the murdered children. That’s not academic freedom. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413.md?page=2)