A University of Kansas staff member has been placed on administrative leave after telling a class that if men won’t vote for Kamala Harris because she is a woman, “we could line all those guys up and shoot them.”
The staff member appears to be an instructor of some classes in the Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Sciences. A spokesperson for the university did not immediately confirm the instructor’s identity.
A video circulating online shows the professor making the comments during a class.
“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,” he said in the recording. “We could line all those guys up and shoot them.”
Update:
• KU instructor who made comments about men who won’t vote for a woman has left university, Oct. 11, 2024
He then quickly asks for the comment to be scratched from the class recording because he doesn’t want a dean to hear it.
“Did I say that?” he said. “Scratch that from the recording. I don’t want the deans hearing that I said that.”
KU spokesperson Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said the university was aware of the video, which was recorded earlier in the semester. The instructor is being placed on administrative leave, pending further investigation.
“The instructor offers his sincerest apologies and deeply regrets the situation. 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,” Barcomb-Peterson said. “The university has an established process for situations like this and will follow that process.”
His class was canceled Wednesday, according to an email sent to students. The instructor’s staff profile page on the KU Athletics website was taken down Wednesday morning.
The instructor and a representative for the Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Sciences did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.
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