LEFT-WING POLITICAL VIOLENCE ON CAMPUSES: The most high-profile recent cases

Charlie Kirk died after being shot in the neck while answering questions from students at Utah Valley University. President Donald Trump confirmed the news on his Truth Social account, where he asked for prayers for his family. The event took place in a context of marked political polarization.

The attack on the podcaster and founder of Turning Point USA joined the list of other conservative speakers who were also assaulted in educational institutions. Among the other personalities who were attacked in similar contexts are Charles Murray, Michael Knowles and Riley Gaines.

Charles Murray- 2017

Political scientist Charles Murray was giving a speech at Middlebury College (Vermont). After the event was disrupted due to a group of protesters, Murray and Professor Allison Stanger were moved to another location. In the course of doing so, they ended up physically confronting the protesters. As a result, Professor Stanger ended up with a brain contusion.

An estimated 100 to 150 students participated in the protest.

Michael Knowles- 2019

The episode involving the political commentator occurred in April 2019, while he was delivering a talk at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC). There, a masked student sprayed him with a dubious substance, later determined to be lavender oil. The assailant was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and assault.

At the time, Knowles called it "a warning to conservatives on campus."

Riley Gaines- 2023

The activist and swimmer was assaulted at San Francisco State University while explaining why transgender athletes should not compete in women's sports. Gaines was punched twice by a man and ended the evening holed up in one of the classrooms for three hours.

"I was physically assaulted by one person. I was struck twice, both times hitting my shoulder with the second strike grazing my face," Gaines told CNN's Natasha Chen. "The rest of the protestors just ambushed and cornered me before I was able to move out with the help of campus police," the activist told CNN.

Riley Gaines and Olivia Krolczyk- 2025

As Gaines recounted, demonstrators threw "human feces" to protest an event organized by Turning Point USA at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Beyond violence: Obstacles for conservatives on campus

Although not reaching the point of physical violence, there have been cases of attempted censorship against various conservative speakers in recent years.

One of the most viral cases was that of Ben Shapiro at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2017, the founder of The Daily Wire faced strong opposition from progressive students on campus. The university spent $600,000 to ensure the speaker's safety. According to local authorities, nine people were arrested at the event.

Another prominent case was that of Judge Kyle Duncan, which took place in 2023 at Stanford University. The arrival of Duncan, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, provoked rejection from progressive students.

When protesters began to boycott the speech, Duncan asked Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach for help. However, Steinbach began to criticize the judge's ideas, even criticizing his presence on campus.

“The culture of murder is spreading among the left”

In April of this year, more than four months before his death, Kirk published an article analyzing political violence by the most progressive sectors. It accumulated more than six million views on X.

“Assassination culture is spreading on the left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump,” he wrote.

"The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb," the founder of Turning Point USA said.