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
