From Campus Rhetoric to Assassination

Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published by AEI on September 11, 2025. It is crossposted here with permission.


Charlie Kirk is dead.

The founder of Turning Point USA was fatally shot by a sniper while speaking at Utah Valley University. Authorities are investigating the killing as a politically motivated assassination. For years, Kirk warned that escalating anti-Semitism spreading across campuses was not simply about free expression. His death tragically proves the point: Rhetoric has turned lethal.

New data from FIRE shows just how dangerous this moment has become. According to their latest survey, one-third of Stanford students now say violence is justifiable to stop speech they dislike. These are the young students who will soon lead our institutions. When campuses normalize rhetoric that demonizes and legitimizes harm toward Jews and supporters of Israel, they teach students to see violence as acceptable political action.

[RELATED: FIRE Overstates Conservative Censorship on Campus]

For months, we’ve been told that chants echoing through quads are merely symbolic. But phrases like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are calls for Israel’s destruction, the eradication of its Jewish population, and the murder of Jewish Zionists globally. When Jewish students hear these words, they understand the message: You do not belong here, and you are not safe.

One of the most chilling examples is Unity of Fields, a group that was welcomed to the Sarah Lawrence College campus. Unity of Fields is not a peaceful protest organization. It is a radical direct-action network that trains students in violent tactics. Earlier this year, its members stormed Columbia University’s library, distributing pamphlets glorifying terrorists. Two campus safety officers were injured, and nearly 80 people were arrested.

Investigators uncovered a 14-page sabotage manual circulated by Unity of Fields providing explicit instructions: how to buy sledgehammers with cash, clog campus pipes with concrete, evade law enforcement, and coordinate attacks. When a Jewish couple was murdered at the DC Jewish Museum, Unity of Fields praised the killer online, calling the attack an “act of solidarity and love” and sharing his manifesto. MEMRI documented how the group created a “Free Elias Rodriguez Organizing Committee” to glorify the murderer. This is terror recruitment masquerading as campus activism.

This threat is personal. As I have documented, Sarah Lawrence College has consistently failed to protect its Jewish students and faculty. When Unity of Fields came to campus, the administration did not condemn them; it welcomed them. With the administration’s blessing, the Students for Justice in Palestine—a group “supporting the fight for Palestinian liberation from the Zioamerican colonial project”—welcomed dangerous outsiders to campus including Unity of Fields, which the ADL describes as a “radical far-left, anti-Zionist ‘direct action network’ that engages in and/or promotes aggressive, targeted protests and the defacement of property.”

In November, violent students took over our central campus building in the middle of the night, trapping students in their dorm rooms. They barricaded themselves inside and negotiated with our weak administration to set up an encampment. The college then allowed outside participants to remain on campus from dawn to dusk, allegedly to preserve “community health and safety”—effectively legitimizing their presence. The message was clear: Those who seek to destroy Israel are given a platform, while those of us who defend Zionism are left vulnerable.

I have found Unity of Fields propaganda under my office door. It was a warning: We know who you are, we know where you work, and we are watching you. I am a professor, a colleague, and a parent. No one should navigate their professional life under such threats. Yet Jewish students and faculty face this reality daily. An ADL survey found that 83 percent of Jewish college students have experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism firsthand within the year following October 7, 2023.

College leaders claim their hands are tied by the First Amendment. But this is a misreading of the law. The Supreme Court has long held that free speech does not protect true threats or incitement to imminent violence. When Unity of Fields distributes operational guides for sabotage, they are not engaging in dialogue; they are plotting crimes. When students chant for the annihilation of a people, they are issuing threats.

[RELATED: ‘Can Universities Take Anti-Semitism Seriously?’]

Charlie Kirk’s assassination is the endpoint of this failure to act. It is what happens when warnings are dismissed and violence is excused as “just politics.”

Universities must take immediate steps: ban extremist groups like Unity of Fields from campus, work with law enforcement to prevent attacks and investigate threats, and provide real protections for Jewish students and faculty. These actions are not about silencing dissent but about safeguarding the basic rights and dignity of every member of the academic community.

Kirk’s murder is a wake-up call. The line between speech and violence has been crossed. Universities must decide whether they will be sanctuaries of learning or incubators of hate. The future of higher education, and the safety of our communities, depends on their answer.


Image: “Charlie Kirk by Gage Skidmore” on Wikimedia Commons

Author

  • Samuel J. Abrams

    Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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2 thoughts on “From Campus Rhetoric to Assassination

  1. “Kirk’s murder is a wake-up call. The line between speech and violence has been crossed. Universities must decide whether they will be sanctuaries of learning or incubators of hate.

    No, we’re way beyond that now — this was a proxy assassination of the President and it is time for Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Donald Trump to step up to the plate and deal with what are criminal conspiracies to violate civil rights and start making arrests. The Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Anti Klu Klux Klan Act is still on the books and it authorizes Trump to send federal troops onto college campi, to arrest everyone (including campus administrators) and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus so judges can’t order their release.

    “The college then allowed outside participants to remain on campus from dawn to dusk, allegedly to preserve “community health and safety”—effectively legitimizing their presence.”

    Which is why the administrators are subject to Federal criminal liability for conspiracy to deny civil rights. The Jan 6th protesters who posed for pictures inside the Capitol did far less. And Trump would only have to do that once or twice to put an end to the current practice of appeasement.

    For those who don’t know US history — sadly, too many people — in the years after the Civil War, the Klan was the militant (and often violent) wing of the Democratic Party, much like Antifa and the Hamas Fan Clubs are today — the Klan was particularly obnoxious in South Carolina and President US Grant put an end to it.

    And it is time for President Trump to do likewise.

    It is time for Team Trump to “follow the money” that is behind all of this. This isn’t a hardscrabble grass-roots movement like those of the right — instead it is one of people with six-figure lifestyles, and this isn’t all trust funds.

    We know that the Soviet funded trouble in academia during the ’60s and ’70s — is it too much to wonder if the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, (etc.) aren’t doing it now?

    And the biggest issue: The perp (whom I will not name) was a good kid from a good family. A squeaky-clean, straight ‘A’ student, with two married parents (both of whom are Republicans), and a father who is a cop.

    He goes to college and SOMETHING happens….

    Free speech does not do this.
    Mere exposure to diverse viewpoints does not do this.
    And if this was a one time thing, a unique fluke, it would be one thing.

    But we’ve created a generation of monsters….

    So we need to find out what happened to this kid — AND STOP IT!!!!!

    1. Greetings friend. Well said!

      For low info / fake news solutions to your query….
      Ping AAUP Organizers / AFT / AFL-CIO, or the tooth fairy.

      For the real news, ask Rutgers, Fidel Wolfson, or Todd Castro.

      God bless America!

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