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The University of Kansas announced Friday that an instructor is no longer employed there after a video showed him “making a highly inappropriate comment in his classroom suggesting violence against individuals for their personal views.”
University officials didn’t name the instructor, but the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has identified him as Phillip Lowcock, a health sport and exercise science lecturer who allegedly made an offhand comment in class that men who wouldn't vote for a woman for president should be shot. By Friday, Lowcock's profile page was no longer on the university's website.
Asked whether Lowcock was fired or voluntarily left, a university spokesperson said in an email “that’s a personnel issue the university is not able to discuss.” Inside Higher Ed was unable to reach Lowcock Friday.
On Wednesday, Libs of TikTok, a conservative X account with 3.6 million followers, posted an undated classroom video allegedly of Lowcock telling students that “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 man in the half-minute-long video then says, “We can line all those guys up and shoot them. They clearly don’t understand the way the world works.” He immediately follows that with “Did I say that? Scratch that from the recording. I don’t want the deans hearing that I said that.”
The university announced shortly after the video was posted that an instructor who made an “inappropriate reference to violence” had been placed on administrative leave.
“The instructor offers his sincerest apologies and deeply regrets the situation,” the statement said. “His intent was to emphasize his advocacy for women’s rights and equality, and he recognizes he did a very poor job of doing so.”
Graham Piro, faculty legal defense fund fellow at FIRE, said Friday that “the university will be hearing from us shortly … this seems to be a pretty egregious misunderstanding of the First Amendment.”
Whether Lowcock resigned or was fired, Piro said the situation is concerning. From the video, Piro said it seems like Lowcock was making a hyperbolic joke, not a “true threat” that wouldn’t be protected under the First Amendment.
Anita Levy, a senior program officer in the American Association of University Professors' Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure and Governance, said she also doesn’t know whether Lowcock was fired. But she said “there’s a full panoply of due process protections that he should have.”
Not everyone was unhappy Friday. U.S. senator Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican who on Wednesday called for Lowcock to be fired, posted on X Friday: “I am glad to report that the professor who called for men to be ‘lined up and shot,’ declaring open season on people who don’t plan to vote for Kamala Harris, is no longer an employee at KU.”
Kansas provost Barb Bichelmeyer said in her statement to campus Friday that “we fully support the academic freedom of our teachers as they engage in classroom instruction. Academic freedom, however, is not a license for suggestions of violence like we saw in the video.”
“It’s no secret that higher education and, more broadly, our society continue to grapple with issues of free speech, care and respect for others, and civic engagement,” Bichelmeyer said. “The world is what we make of it. Please use this unfortunate event as an opportunity to reflect on these topics and the role each of us plays in our academic community.”
