The University of Kansas announced that an instructor who went viral on X for comments about shooting certain types of male students is no longer employed, according to a report from Inside Higher Education.
Phillip Lowcock, a health sport and exercise science lecturer, can be seen in viral video footage saying he’d like people to line up men who wouldn’t want to vote for a female candidate because she’s a female.
“What frustrates me — there are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don’t think females are smart enough to be president,” the professor said.
“We can line all those guys up and shoot them,” Lowcock continued. “They clearly don’t understand the way the world works.”
Moments after his comments, Lowcock insisted that he wanted those comments scratched from the recording as he didn’t “want the deans hearing that [he] said that.”
The university announced after the video went viral that the instructor had been placed on leave for an “inappropriate reference to violence.”
Graham Piro, a fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told Turning Point USA that the free speech organization believes the university was wrong to terminate Lowcock.
“In this video, the instructor makes a brief comment about shooting men who will not vote for a woman for president because they think women are less intelligent. To be a punishable true threat under the First Amendment, a speaker must convey a clear intent to commit unlawful violence against a specific individual or group of individuals. That intent must be unmistakable,” Piro said.
“The instructor’s comment in this video does not indicate that he actually intends to engage in violence — he didn’t identify a specific individual or a reasonably identifiable group of individuals,” Piro continued. “It would be virtually impossible to actually identify all men who do not vote for a female candidate because she’s a woman.
The University of Kansas is bound by the First Amendment, which protects jokes, hyperbole, and advocacy for political violence.
“We urge the university to reverse any discipline of the instructor for this comment,” Piro concluded.
This piece first appeared at TPUSA.
