What’s Behind Professor’s Claim That Men Who Won’t Vote For Harris Should Be Lined Up And Shot?

By Tyler O'Neil, The Daily Signal | October 10, 2024

The University of Kansas confirmed the authenticity of footage showing an instructor stating that men who refuse to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris should be lined up and shot.

The statement, a clear expression of political violence, seems to echo the Left’s trend of imputing ill motives to Americans who disagree with its ideology.

“[If you think] guys are smarter than girls, you’ve got some serious problems,” an instructor says in the video, which has gone viral on social media. (While some online claim to have identified the professor, the school has not confirmed the identity.) “That’s 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. We could line all those guys up and shoot them. They clearly don’t understand the way the world works.

“Did I say that?” the instructor asks. “Scratch that from the recording. I don’t want the deans hearing that I said that.”

The University of Kansas announced Wednesday that it had placed the instructor on administrative leave.

“The university is aware of a classroom video in which an instructor made an inappropriate reference to violence,” the school announced. “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,” the university added.

The instructor’s remarks seem to echo the leftist elites’ exasperation with the American people’s inability to just fall in line.

Will some Americans vote against Kamala Harris because she is a woman? Perhaps. Honestly, I think Americans care more about inflation, the economy, the border, abortion, and other issues than they do about whether the next president is male or female. Many Americans want a female president, and it seems plausible that this preference may balance out any genuinely misogynistic voters.

It remains unclear whether the instructor knows many men who say they will vote against Harris because they think “females” aren’t “smart enough to be president.” However, many surveys have revealed that the 2024 election represents something of a battle of the sexes: Young men are trending toward former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, while many young women trend toward Harris.

The instructor suggests that animus and hate on the part of men—rather than concerns about the economy, foreign wars, and other pertinent issues—drives this gender gap, and he seems to have worked himself into a frenzy about just how malignant these supposedly misogynistic men are.

The instructor’s decision to impute bad motives to a voting pattern he appears not to like strikes a bell for me. It reminds me of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton’s line that many Trump supporters fit in a “basket of deplorables.” It echoes Barack Obama’s April 2008 line that conservatives are “bitter clingers,” rather than people who just disagree with his policies.

“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said.

More than anything else, it reminds me of the Southern Poverty Law Center. For those who aren’t familiar, the SPLC puts mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a “hate map” alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan in what a former employee called a “highly profitable scam.” The SPLC uses the “hate map” to scare donors into ponying up cash, and to smear those who disagree with its leftist agenda.

According to the SPLC, if you don’t want pornographic materials in school libraries, you’re an “Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group.” If you want to enforce immigration law and deport illegal aliens, you’re an “Anti-Immigrant Hate Group.” If you support parental rights, well, you guessed it, onto the hate list with you!

These accusations of “hate” can trigger real-world violence. In 2012, a gunman targeted the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., for a mass shooting because it was on the SPLC “hate map.” The SPLC condemned the shooter, but kept the Family Research Council on its map. In 2017, a shooter opened fire at a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. That shooter had “liked” the SPLC on Facebook, and the SPLC had repeatedly attacked Scalise.

Trump has faced two assassination attempts, and at least five threats that resulted in criminal charges. Many of those threatening Trump’s life repeated the heated rhetoric accusing Trump of “fascism.”

Americans have every right to criticize political candidates like Trump and Harris, and they have many reasons to support or oppose those candidates. The danger comes when Americans impute ill motives to their political opponents, and then work themselves into a rage about just how evil their opponents must be.

This University of Kansas instructor has reportedly apologized, but his remarks reveal the danger of political hatred in America’s universities—which have grown increasingly liberal to the point of ostracizing and demonizing conservatives.

It’s high time for America’s left-leaning elites to stop assuming the worst about the people who disagree with them.

Tyler O'Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of two books: "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center," and "The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government."

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