SAR’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project investigates and reports attacks on higher education with the aim of raising awareness, generating advocacy, and increasing protection for scholars, students, and academic communities. Starting July 1, 2026, SAR no longer publishes reports for the incidents that it records. SAR continues to monitor and record incidents that will be used in the annual Free to Think report. This page provides a record of incidents reported up to that date. Learn more about the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project.

Date of Incident: September 10, 2025

Attack Types: Killings, Violence, Disappearances

Institution(s):Utah Valley University

Region & Country:Americas | United States of America

New or Ongoing:New Incident

On September 10, 2025, a 22-year old former Utah Valley University (UVU) student shot and killed political commentator and activist Charlie Kirk at an event on UVU’s campus.

Kirk was the cofounder of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit group that advocates for conservative values on high school, college, and university campuses. A gunman with a long-range rifle shot him while Kirk was speaking on campus in an outdoor area to a crowd estimated at 3,000 people. The event at UVU as part of a multi-campus speaking tour during which Kirk would debate attendees about conservative politics.

Turning Point USA reports student chapters at many US higher education institutions. The organization also maintains a “Professor Watchlist”, a website that lists the name, photo, and institution for university faculty and staff accused of “discriminating against conservative students” and “advanc[ing] leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The website encourages visitors to “submit a tip” to “expose” professors they accuse of bias, and includes a pre-set checkbox list suggesting types of bias, including: anti-law enforcement, anti-second amendment, antisemitic, censorship, climate alarmist, foreign influence, socialism, identity politics, riots and violence, and other.

Scholars at Risk condemns the killing of a guest speaker on a university campus. Political violence is reprehensible. Political violence on a higher education campus has an added tragic dimension: It undermines the university as a space to come together, to take time, and to wrestle with hard questions, united in a shared commitment not to seek outcomes through force or coercion. In this way, universities can and should be incubators of democratic values.SAR calls on everyone to reject violence and the impulse to vilify and shut down debate and to recommit building mutual understanding through respectful listening and evidence-based discourse.

Sources:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/charlie-kirk-a-leader-of-the-rights-higher-ed-reform-movement-is-shot-dead-on-a-utah-campus
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/us/politics/charlie-kirk-killer.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/charlie-kirk-shot-utah
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/16/charlie-kirk-shooting-prosecutor-utah
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/11/who-was-charlie-kirk-what-we-know-about-the-shooting-and-the-suspect