# 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:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/21 "2016-02-22T05:50:01Z")
> [@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? Had he been convicted? ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/22 "2016-02-22T05:52:16Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > 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. Firing somebody for a non-work related crime-wouldn’t that be something like a civil rights violation, though? Also, had he been convicted of a crime? Charged? ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/23 "2016-02-22T05:55:22Z")
> [@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. These are the same arguments that I had about a PS professor at my university who hated Reagan. He hated him. Totally reprehensible behavior, telling of what Reagan did that he didn’t like. The man was unbalanced. Unfortunately, there was no way we could get him fired, even though it showed a complete disconnect from reality. ---
**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, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/24 "2016-02-22T14:08:36Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > Had he been convicted? > [@handsomeharry](#): > > Also, had he been convicted of a crime? Charged? Good question. If he wasn’t charged with a crime, why not? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/25 "2016-02-22T14:49:50Z")
It’s complex. Bringing the university into disrepute is not a cause for firing. The purpose of tenure is to protect people who hold unappealing views. A geologist could not be fired in 1950 for believing in moving continents, but that was held to be ridiculous and would hold the university up to ridicule. Harassing the parents was certainly disreputable and possibly criminal, but unless he was tried and convicted, it is not a firing offense. But everywhere professors are required to file annual reports on outside activities. I had to even though they were only unremunerated things like refereeing and being a journal editor. I probably would have only been reprimanded had I refused, but the point is, I could in principle have been fired. ---
**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 22, 2016, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/26 "2016-02-22T15:30:24Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > 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’. Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I’m only addressing the issue of tenure here and its purpose in academics. As someone who likes the free market, more or less, if someone was working for my company and posted stuff that made my company look bad, yeah, I’d fire 'em in a heartbeat. ---
**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, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/27 "2016-02-22T16:49:29Z")
That gets real close to the Red Scare days: Are any of your friends or acquaintances on this list? Associating with someone with reprehensible views constitutes endorsing them. Only comprehensive shunning is good enough for those with reprehensible views. And where does unpopular shade into reprehensible? Do we really have to go through that process as a society after watching what it’s done time and again in otherwise civilized countries including our own? The nice part about this particular nutso is he’s so far out there he’s easy to ignore & ridicule. We don’t need his university’s stamp of disapproval to know he’s a whack job. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/28 "2016-02-22T21:33:50Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > 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. What was the nature of this harassment? The only contact between him and any of the victim’s families I heard about was initiated by the parents. While his response was reprehensible on multiple levels, I don’t think you can hang a harassment charge on him for responding to someone else contacting him. If there’s more to ghe harassment then the incident I read about, obviously this doesn’t apply. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2016, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/29 "2016-02-28T12:08:53Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > That gets real close to the Red Scare days: Are any of your friends or acquaintances on this list? > > Associating with someone with reprehensible views constitutes endorsing them. Only comprehensive shunning is good enough for those with reprehensible views. > > And where does unpopular shade into reprehensible? > > Do we really have to go through that process as a society after watching what it’s done time and again in otherwise civilized countries including our own? > > The nice part about this particular nutso is he’s so far out there he’s easy to ignore & ridicule. We don’t need his university’s stamp of disapproval to know he’s a whack job. It would really be nice if we could ever have a discussion about stuff on here without people reaching for the most inane possible reasons to defend the most deplorable people. There is nothing remotely like the Red scare here. The premise of the red scare was stupid (that having socialist views meant you’d betray your country) and the actual determinations were inaccurate–the people in question generally weren’t socialist. This is one man who did one thing. There is no denying he did it. And there is a connection between someone who believes in completely disprovable conspiracy theories and their in ability to teach. And there is no line between unpopular and reprehensible. They aren’t on the same axes. Speech that is reprehensible is such because of the pain it causes others. This speech is generally less popular, but only because most people don’t want to hurt others. I have said plenty of unpopular things that hurt absolutely no one. I won’t apologize for those. I have said things that hurt other people–those get an apology. One is wrong, the other isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2016, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413/30 "2016-02-29T22:41:06Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > What was the nature of this harassment? The only contact between him and any of the victim’s families I heard about was initiated by the parents. While his response was reprehensible on multiple levels, I don’t think you can hang a harassment charge on him for responding to someone else contacting him. Yeah, this. As described, he makes a public claim, the parents contact him and tell him to remove incorrect info, he sends a response letter saying “prove it.” Now, the nature of the claim and the response certainly makes this behavior reprehensible and assholish, but I doubt it’s harassment, legally. I’m also not a fan of the bullshit end-run around tenure. This guy wasn’t really fired for failure to file a form. He was fired for being an embarrassingly public asshole. The _whole point_ of tenure is to protect just such embarrassingly wrong speech. If you want to fire people for being assholes, then don’t offer them tenure. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nutbag-sandy-hook-denying-tenured-professor-finally-fired/746413.md?page=1)