The College Fix

A retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor and former Marine known for his conspiracy theories claims the U.S. government was involved in the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.

Via the Duluth News Tribune:

A retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor known for his conspiracy theories on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the 9/11 attacks and the Paul Wellstone plane crash has found himself in the news again — this time for claiming the U.S. government was involved in the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.

… (James) Fetzer, also an author and former Marine Corps officer, claims in an online journal that Israeli Mossad death squads and the U.S. government might have been behind the school shootings in Connecticut.

… Fetzer writes in his online column, published on “Press TV and “Veterans Today”: “The Sandy Hook massacre appears to have been a psy op intended to strike fear in the hearts of Americans by the sheer brutality of the massacre, where the killing of children is a signature of terror ops conducted by agents of Israel.”

The act, Fetzer said in an interview with the News Tribune, “is part of an escalating series of covert operations intended to create hysteria in the American people in order to support gun control legislation that completely subverts the Second Amendment.”

Fetzer … says he doesn’t speak for UMD and that UMD hasn’t suggested he refrain from connecting himself to the university.

“There is something called freedom of research, freedom of inquiry,” he said, “which the University of Minnesota has respected. I can’t imagine why any university would want to discourage its faculty from exercising their independent thought and critical reasoning ability.”

… But to the average person who reads the Fetzer piece, it appears Fetzer represents UMD, said Donna Halper, an associate professor of communication at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.

“For a professor to be spreading stereotypes under the guise of academic freedom is profoundly disappointing,” said Halper, whose earlier career in radio led her to Duluth several times. She found Duluth to be tolerant and compassionate, she said, and she was surprised to read Fetzer’s work, which she classified as a “fringe view.”

“I’m not saying he doesn’t have the right to speak, but … when it comes from a professor, it makes me wonder: What did he teach his students?” asked Halper, who teaches courses on philosophy and communication ethics.

Click here to read full Duluth News Tribune article.

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