A professor with Ohio State University’s two-year-old intellectual diversity center has been placed on paid administrative leave after he got into a physical altercation with an independent documentarian trying to interview former President E. Gordon Gee.

Luke Perez, an assistant professor with the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, can be seen in a now-viral video hitting recording equipment out of the man’s hand and tackling him to the ground after the documentarian got too close to Perez’s face.

“I told you not to put that in my face,” Perez said in the video. “…You put your hands on me, sir. You put your hands on me, sir.”

Recorded Feb. 9, the 22-second video does not show that the documentarian made contact with Perez. 

“We are aware of the incident, and it is very concerning,” OSU spokesman Ben Johnson told The College Fix in an emailed statement Thursday. “The faculty member involved has been placed on administrative leave pending a full OSUPD investigation and thorough review of the facts.”

Johnson told The Fix the two citizen journalists who were questioning Gee prior to the altercation are not under investigation. 

Reached for comment, Perez referred The Fix back to Johnson.

“The incident in question took place the evening of Feb. 9 at Smith Lab following one of Perez’s classes, Profiles in American Leadership. The class includes a series of guest lecturers, and Gee – the two-time former Ohio State president who is currently serving as a consultant for the Chase Center – was speaker for that class session,” the Columbus Dispatch reported.

The two men who questioned Gee are D.J. Byrnes, an Ohio-based left-wing blogger of “The Rooster” Substack, and the independent documentarian, Michael Newman, who is not officially affiliated with Byrnes. 

The two citizen journalists, both OSU alumni, reportedly caught up with Gee after he spoke to the class.  

“Gee and The Rooster discussed his role in the Dr. Richard Strauss abuse scandal as cited by the university’s independent investigation, Ohio State’s ties to the late international sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and the ‘best decision of his career’ in privatizing university parking lots for $500 million,” Byrnes noted on his Substack.

By all accounts, Gee calmly answered Byrnes’ questions, but the trouble began when Newman wanted to ask some, too, at which point the faculty members said he’d answered enough, and the altercation followed soon after. 

The men have filed an incident report with the campus Department of Public Safety.

Johnson told WOSU that Ohio State is an open public campus and that journalists are welcome in public spaces, including public buildings, as long as they are not disruptive.

Newman told WKYC “as bad as my injury was, my First Amendment rights were violated — and that’s just as bad.”

MORE: Capitalism ‘did its job’— now it’s time to replace it: Arizona State U. event