David Flory, who has been on the physics department faculty at Fairleigh Dickinson University campus in Madison, New Jersey, for more than 40 years, was arrested earlier this week while patronizing a Starbucks in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Professor Flory has a vacation home in Santa Fe.
Police charged Flory with 40 counts of promoting prostitution. The prostitution ring involved about 200 women and more than 1,200 customers. The operation was conducted online at a web site called Southwest Companions. A spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department stated that Professor Flory maintained that he did not make any money off the venture and operated the Web site as “a safe place for guys to find female prostitutes.”
Dr. Flory joined the faculty at Fairleigh Dickinson in 1969. He holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Yeshiva University.
In the February 2011 issue of Inside FDU, Professor Flory was asked, “What profession other than your own would you most like to attempt, and what profession would you want nothing to do with?” He responded that he would like to try a career “in theatrical lighting design.” He went on to says that “as to professions that I would avoid like the plague, at the top of the list would probably be marketing and advertising, because they so often require you to misrepresent or distort reality in order to sell a product.”
He was also asked to complete the phrase, “People would be surprised to know that I. . .” There was no hint in his response that he had a secret life in another profession. Rather he stated that he was a scuba diver.