Florida Atlantic University recommended Wednesday that a professor who insists the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre never happened be terminated after the parents of one of the victims accused him of harassment, according to a CBS affiliate.
James Tracy, an associate professor in FAU’s School of Communication & Multimedia Studies, has 10 days to appeal the university’s decision, according to WFOR’s report.
The termination notice came almost a week after the parents of Noah Pozner, a 6 year-old who was killed in the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, published an op-ed in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel that accused Tracy of harassing them for proof that their son was once alive.
Lenny and Veronique Pozner called for repercussions for Tracy’s actions from the university in the op-ed, which was published on the third anniversary of the shooting that left 26 people, including 20 children, dead.
“FAU has a civic responsibility to ensure that it does not contribute to the ongoing persecution of the countless Americans who’ve lost their loved ones to high-profile acts of violence,” they wrote.
The university had previously reprimanded Tracy in 2013 for posting on his personal blog that the Sandy Hook shooting was likely staged. The university said at the time that Tracy didn’t make it clear enough that he was not speaking on the college’s behalf, according to the Sun Sentinel.
Tracy responded to the Pozners’ letter earlier this week in a post on the Facebook page “Sandy Hook Hoax.”
Tracy wrote in the post that the Pozner family has financially benefitted from “misinformed Americans.” He also claimed that their son, Noah, died twice—once at Newtown and again at the Peshawar Army School in Pakistan two years later.
Tracy called the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a “performance” and argued that “anomalies” could be found in pictures taken as evidence at the scene. Those “anomalies” included “no surge of EMTs in to the building,” “no Med-Evac helicopter called to the scene” and “no bodies placed on the triage tarps outside.”
In the post, Tracy also advertised his book “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook,” which outlines his conspiracy theories. He said it was released online for free after Amazon refused to sell it.
Tracy didn’t immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.
Read the Pozners’ full op-ed here, and Tracy’s full Facebook post here.
This post has been updated.
