photo by: Screenshot via Twitter

A video shows KU's Phillip Lowcock, a lecturer in the Department of Health, Sport & Exercise Science, making comments in a classroom about lining up and shooting men because they believe a female isn’t smart enough to be president.

The KU instructor who made a comment about lining up men and shooting them has left the university, KU announced Friday.

The video of Phillip Lowcock, a lecturer in the Department of Health, Sport & Exercise Science, came to light Wednesday and promptly landed Lowcock on administrative leave and triggered a university investigation.

In the video, Lowcock says: “What frustrates me is 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. We could line all those guys up and shoot them. They clearly don’t understand the way the world works.”

Provost Barbara A. Bichelmeyer sent a letter Friday informing the KU community that Lowcock had “left” the university. How the departure came about was unclear. Bichelmeyer said the administration was working to identify a new instructor to take over Lowcock’s classes.

“The instructor has apologized to me and other university leaders,” the letter said. “He has explained to us that 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.”

Immediately after making the comment about shooting males, Lowcock, who knew he was being filmed, said: “Did I say that? Scratch that from the recording. I don’t want the deans hearing that I said that.”

Bichelmeyer’s letter said that free expression is essential to a university and that the administration supports the academic freedom of teachers as they engage in classroom instruction.

“Academic freedom, however, is not a license for suggestions of violence like we saw in the video,” she wrote. ” While we embrace our university’s role as a place for all kinds of dialogue, violent rhetoric is never acceptable.”

As the Journal-World reported, the video drew condemnation for its references to violence and the political process, with U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, calling for KU to immediately fire Lowcock. However, one of the country’s leading free speech groups, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, came out in defense of Lowcock, and said his firing over an “off-handed joke” would be an “erosion of the First Amendment.”

Details about Lowcock were sparse on his KU staff listing page. However, information on the website of KU Athletics listed Lowcock, who holds a doctorate, as having worked for Kansas Athletics for 19 years and having served as the primary academic adviser for the baseball team. Another listing online identified Lowcock as the director of international student-athlete support for KU and said that he had been a Kansas resident for almost 50 years.

In her letter, Bichelmeyer noted that institutions of higher education, and society generally, continued to grapple with free speech issues, as well as issues of care and respect for others, and civic engagement.

“The world is what we make of it,” she wrote in the letter. “Please use this unfortunate event as an opportunity to reflect on these topics and the role each of us plays in our academic community.”