There was an instructor at the University of Kansas who had some interesting ideas about the 2024 election, ideas he felt obliged to share with his students. I use the past tense “was” because he’s now on leave:

An instructor at the University of Kansas has been placed on leave after a video on X showed him suggesting to his class that men who won’t vote for a female president should be shot.

“(If you think) guys are smarter than girls, you’ve got some serious problems,” the man in the video said. “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? Scratch that from the recording. I don’t want the deans hearing that I said that.”

Oopsie doopsie. This was being recorded and apparently the instructor knew it. Here’s part of the university’s response:

“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 has an established process for situations like this and will follow that process.”

In a similar statement on X, KU added that the comments “made an inappropriate reference to violence.”

Free speech advocates say he should be reinstated:

“The First Amendment protects professors who tell brief, off-topic jokes in the classroom,” said Graham Piro, FIRE program officer, in a statement. “It also protects hyperbole. In order to constitute a true threat, a speaker must communicate a serious intent to commit an act of unlawful violence against a specific individual or a group of individuals.

Sorry, but that’s not the standard that’s applied if a professor were to say something of the sort against a protected group. For example, let’s say the professor had joked that people who vote for Kamala Harris should be shot. I don’t think such a teacher would last at any university, although I could be wrong.

A more interesting story, I think, is Obama’s latest statements on the matter – not the matter of free speech, but the matter of voting for a woman. Obama recently came out of pseudo-retirement to say this in a talk in Pittsburgh to a group of black men. He said they didn’t seem as entusiastic for Harris as they had been for him, and then added:

And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said.

“Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”

Typical Obama. Kamala Harris’ individual characteristics are just “reasons and excuses” with which Obama has a problem, because the most salient characteristics anyone has are the identity groups to which that person belongs. Kamala Harris is black and a woman (yes, she’s also Indian, but that’s not Obama’s concern) – and that’s the reason to vote for her.

When Obama was running for president, he and many of his spokespeople made it clear that anyone who didn’t support him was suspected of having racism as the motivation. This was noticeable right from the start. I wrote this post in June of 2008, and it was already quite clear what he was trying to do:

Barack Obama, the candidate who wants to end divisiveness, and who wants to run a clean and honorable campaign without negativity, said the following in a recent campaign speech at a Florida fund-raising reception:

“It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. ‘He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?'”

We have here a truly masterful attempt to flames of paranoia on the part of his followers and adopt the mantle of victimization for himself, thus raising rather than lowering the amount of divisiveness and vitriol in the campaign. Pretty good for just a couple of sentences.

Obama is correct in saying that there have been racist remarks against him. These have originated from fringe elements and/or commenters in the blogosphere and/or anonymous email campaigns. They focus on his “funny name,” for example, or the fact that he’s black.

But in this speech he appears to attribute – or to encourage his supporters to attribute – these charges to the entire Republican Party, couched as a threatening “they.” At the same time, he fails to differentiate these attacks – and actually connects them as part of an undifferentiated list – from extremely legitimate concerns that people have voiced about other characteristics of his, such as his inexperience.

In the final sentence of the paragraph he slyly encourages a phenomenon I’ve noticed happening more and more: the charge that any criticism of Obama emanates from racism. If the racism isn’t overt and clear, as in the emails, then it’s covert; “inexperience” (a valid concern based on the objective facts of his history) becomes a code word (wink wink) for hidden racism and fearmongering.

This is dangerous demagoguery.

Because one so seldom hears overt expressions of racism any more, and certainly not from mainstream candidates, there has been a tendency to imagine it is everywhere, but hidden. Here Obama cynically fosters that belief and encourages the definition of his entire opposition as energized by this impossible-to-prove – or, more importantly, impossible-to-disprove – motive.

No, it turns out that most of them haven’t mentioned he’s black, except in approving terms. But they don’t have to nowadays to be racists; Obama has taken care of that.

That’s actually the entire post from back then. Obama’s words alarmed me and were a portent of things to come.

But back to the present and Obama’s remarks in Pittsburgh:

[Obama] said that the “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time.”

“When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting,” he said.

“And now you’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

There may indeed be men – black or white – or women, for that matter, who don’t want a woman president. They’re not going to care what Obama says on this. But by far more men – black or white – or women, for that matter, don’t want to vote for a particular woman named Kamala Harris because of her own very individual characteristics, the foremost of which is incompetence plus the inability to answer a question.

And note the dig about “supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you.” It actually took me a moment to realize that Obama must be referring to Donald Trump. In Obama’s circles, Trump’s anti-black racism is considered some sort of truism that doesn’t need proof or even evidence. But in what ways has Trump “denigrated” black men?

I doubt that Obama’s message is going to change the minds of a significant number of black men who have decided not to vote for Harris, or even to vote for Trump. I strongly suspect they are paying attention to things other than identity politics, such as how their lives have been going under Biden versus under Trump. As well they might.

ADDENDUM:

Black pastor Darrel B. Harrison has some trenchant and on-point observations:

Notwithstanding @BarackObama’s ethno-tribalist herding of black men into a sheep’s pen, as it were, so they can be told by him, their self-appointed political shepherd, for whom they are to cast their vote in November, he is stripping these men of their identity as image-bearers of God (Gen. 1:27).

Imagine having your entire identity reduced to the color of your skin and subsequently being told that on that basis alone—the basis of a static and immutable aspect of your personhood (melanin), as opposed to your God-given intellect and discernment—that you must vote for someone simply because that person looks like you.

Think about that.

In Obama’s eyes these black men aren’t “brothas,” they’re sheep. They’re not men, they’re political pawns to be used and discarded once the election is over — just like he did to black people in 2008 and 2012.