THE professor slammed for making an "innocent" lingerie joke has said the backlash he's faced is an attack on free speech.

Richard Ned Lebow was asked which floor he wanted while in a lift and replied "Ladies' lingerie" - leading a colleague to complain.

2 Richard Ned Lebow, 76, faces disciplinary action after he was asked which floor he wanted in a lift and replied: 'Ladies’ lingerie'

The 76-year-old has spoken out and refuses to apologise as he thinks he did nothing wrong.

The ISA deemed that it violated its code of conduct — and has given him until Tuesday to apologise.

However he has so far refused saying his case violates freedom of speech, and he could face disciplinary charges, putting his 53-year career in jeopardy.

The US academic called the complaint “frivolous”,One might say this space is the place for Casey Gray, judging from the cavernous rock-historied Dogpatch warehouse he calls home.

Since October, when he moved his studio from the San Francisco Art Institute graduate spaces nearby, he's been bunking here, wielding a mean spray can, and making brashly psychedelic paintings equally indebted to his adman granddad and the Grateful Dead, which left its trippy imprint on the onetime Sy Klops studio.

That rock 'n' roll ambiance has made its mark on Gray's canvases. "It's a really weird mash-up of time periods and art styles and technology and whatnot," he says of the space that will probably pass into music history in a few years, replaced by condos. "But this place is a huge influence - just all the weird