(JTA) – A Florida university is moving to fire a professor after the parents of the Jewish boy killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting accused him of harassment.
Florida Atlantic University told James Tracy on Wednesday that he is being recommended for termination, the Sun-Sentinel reported. The school did not say why Tracy was being fired, but his published conspiracy theories about the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, and accusations of harassment by the parents of Noah Pozner, appear to have prompted the action. Tracy has 10 days to appeal the termination.
Tracy has written on his personal blog, called Memory Hole, that Sandy Hook was staged and that several other attacks, including the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, were hoaxes.
Veronique and Lenny Pozner, whose son, Noah, was killed in the Sandy Hook attack, wrote in a December 10 Op-Ed in the Sun Sentinel that Tracy is “among those who have personally sought to cause our family pain and anguish by publicly demonizing our attempts to keep cherished photos of our slain son from falling into the hands of conspiracy theorists.”
The Pozners say Tracy sent them a certified letter demanding proof that Noah once lived and that they were his parents, and that they owned the rights to family photographs of Noah published since his death.
“Veronique and I are relieved that truth and honor prevailed,” Lenny Pozner said in a statement, according to the newspaper. The couple said they filed a police report against Tracy for harassment.
Noah Pozner was one of the 20 children and six adult staffers killed on December 14, 2012, in one of the deadliest school shootings in American history.
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