Ray Carter, Director,

Independent Journalism Center

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and outspoken Christian, comes as a record share of U.S. college students now say violence is an acceptable response to speech with which they disagree.

The sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings, released by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and survey partner College Pulse, showed that a growing number of students nationwide view violence as an acceptable response to speech, at least in some circumstances.

The survey of 68,510 college students at 257 universities nationwide found that 34 percent now say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases. That is an increase of 10 percentage points over the last four years.

“More students than ever think violence and chaos are acceptable alternatives to peaceful protest,” FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said in a release, issued before Kirk’s murder. “This finding cuts across partisan lines. It is not a liberal or conservative problem—it’s an American problem. Students see speech that they oppose as threatening, and their overblown response contributes to a volatile political climate.”

Three Oklahoma universities were included in the survey. The share of students voicing support for violence at the University of Oklahoma was well above the national average, while the share supporting violence at Oklahoma State University and the University of Tulsa was below the national average, with Tulsa far below the national norm.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

—President Donald Trump