Sandy Hook massacre was 'staged', says professor fired by college
The media and history professor claimed his writing was a 'scholarly endeavour'
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Your support makes all the difference.A college professor who claimed that the infamous Sandy Hook school massacre was staged by the US government, has been fired from his post.
James Tracy, a tenured associate professor of media history at Florida Atlantic University, was released on Tuesday, according to a statement posted on its website.
“Florida Atlantic University today issued James Tracy with a Notice of Termination,” it said.
The college did not specify why he had been fired and a spokeswoman said the university, based in Boca Raton, would not comment further on the matter.
However, the institution has sought to distance itself from the member of the teaching staff as he continued to claim on his own blog site that the Connecticut school shooting did not actually happen.
Mr Tracy told The Independent on Thursday that he could not yet talk on the record about his dismisal, or his beliefs. "Right now I am finalising things with the university and I cannot comment, he said.
However, he had previously told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he considered his writing - dismissed by most as nothing more than conspiracy theories - as a scholarly endeavor. He made similar claims about the shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado and the 2013 Boston marathon bombing.
“I describe myself as a scholar and public intellectual interested in going more deeply into controversial public events,” he said.
“Although some may see [my theories] as beyond the pale, I am doing what we should be doing as academics.”
Yet, the publicity he has generated has been condemned by relatives of those killed in such incidents
Leonard and Veronique Pozner, whose son Noah was one of the 20 children and six adults children killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook, said he had hurt them deeply. They claimed he had even written a letter to them “demanding proof that Noah once lived”.
“Tracy is among those who have personally sought to cause our family pain and anguish by publicly demonising our attempts to keep cherished photos of our slain son from falling into the hands of conspiracy theorists,” they wrote to the Florida newspaper.
Mr Tracy's dismissal came on the day that President Barack Obama announced new executive measures to tighten regulations regarding access to firearms.
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