An aerial photo of the University of Kansas campus in August 2015.

For much of Wednesday, the identity of a University of Kansas instructor whose video comments about violence and the political process had gone viral was officially unknown. KU officials had not released the identity of the instructor in any of its statements to media outlets around the country.

But around 3 p.m., the chair of the Kansas Republican Party sought to change that. The Kansas GOP sent out a press release condemning the comments, and identified the instructor in question as KU professor David Guth.

However, for anyone who was remotely following the incident — which centered on a statement that some men should be shot for believing that a woman isn’t smart enough to be president — it was clear that the Kansas GOP statement was incorrect. The Journal-World — as did other media outlets — had multiple sources on campus identifying the instructor as Phillip Lowcock, a lecturer in the Department of Health, Sport & Exercise Science.

Guth, as a quick Google search would confirm, has been retired from KU since 2019. Guth, who was a journalism professor, was the subject of a free speech debate in 2013 when he made comments on Twitter that said “blood was on the hands” of the NRA following a mass shooting at the Navy Yard near Washington, D.C. He emphatically ended the tweet by saying next time “let it be your sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you.” The tweet drew wide condemnation, and many conservatives in the Kansas Legislature at the time called for Guth to be fired.

Fast forward to Wednesday, and the Kansas GOP again was calling on him to be fired.

“It should send a shiver down everyone’s spine if KU allows David Guth to return to instructing students,” Kansas GOP Chair Mike Brown said in the press release.

The release also highlighted the 2013 incident and alluded to KU not doing enough to punish Guth.

Shortly after receiving the Kansas GOP press release, the Journal-World reached out to a spokeswoman at KU, asking the university to confirm that the instructor in the most recent video was not Guth. Shortly thereafter, KU provided a statement to the Journal-World naming Lowcock as the instructor in the video.

About an hour after issuing its first press release, the Kansas GOP issued a new version with a correction, saying it had incorrectly attributed comments made by Lowcock to Guth. The correction, though, also offered this: “However, both of these individuals worked for the University of Kansas, and both their comments are vile.”