Charlie Kirk’s murder fuels new MAGA attacks on higher education

In the days following the murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, his friends and allies have called for revenge against all kinds of groups, including trans people and the so-called radical left, even as the motivations of the alleged shooter, who was reportedly raised in a Republican household, remain far from clear. Now, some of those same rightwing figures are homing in on another target: colleges and universities, which they blame for radicalizing both the alleged shooter and, more broadly, people they accuse of celebrating Kirk’s death.

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah man who is accused of shooting Kirk, reportedly attended just one semester of college at Utah State University in 2021. He later enrolled at a technical college, where he was a third-year electrical apprentice. Those facts make it clear that traditional higher education factually could not have played a meaningful role in what led him to allegedly shoot Kirk. But that logic hasn’t mattered to figures like MAGA activist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer, who tweeted on Sunday that it was “time to defund American universities. You don’t need to go to college. Charlie Kirk didn’t go to college.” (At 18, Kirk dropped out of an Illinois community college after one semester to dedicate his time to activism, with funding from Turning Point co-founder Bill Montgomery; after high school, Kirk unsuccessfully applied to West Point.)

In her tweet, Loomer tagged Harmeet Dhillon, an Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, who responded, “I’m on it. And all the other haters at our American funded schools.” 

Dhillon is one of the Trump-appointed officials who has been deeply involved in the push to try to expose, embarrass, or fire anyone speaking ill of Kirk or seeming to celebrate his murder. She praised actions taken against faculty members at Clemson University, where one person has been fired and two instructors suspended after making what the university called “inappropriate” remarks about Kirk following his death. 

Dhillon called Clemson’s actions “a good start,” adding, “Federal funding for higher education is a privilege, NOT a right. The government is not obligated to fund vile garbage with our tax dollars.” 

This general line of argument—that federal funding should be pulled from universities whose employees say things Trump and his allies don’t like—has animated the administration’s long-standing attacks on higher education. But since Kirk’s death, it’s been widely repeated in a new context. Take Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who issued a press release on Monday calling on the Department of Education to cut off “every dime of federal funding to any elementary, secondary, or post-secondary school who refuses to remove or discipline staff who glorify or justify political violence.”  

“This is why these universities should not receive a single American tax dollar,” tweeted Lara Logan, a former CBS journalist turned conspiracy theorist, while reposting a report about a University of Michigan professor accused of celebrating Kirk’s death. “They preach hatred of this country, which is Marxist doctrine. It is helping to destroy this country from within—wake up.” 

Other figures, like Federalist editor-in-chief Molly Hemingway, called for what could credibly be described as affirmative action to make schools more conservative. “All public universities should be required to have minimum 50% of their staff be conservative professors by spring 2026,” she tweeted. “In each department.” When a journalist on the site asked if she supported affirmative action, Hemingway responded, “No, I want to remove the left-wing oppression that has destroyed American universities.” 

Beyond calls to defund colleges and universities, other figures have said that such institutions need more surveillance and campus activism from conservative students. The group includes longtime sting video maker James O’Keefe, who said his company O’Keefe Media Group “will be distributing hidden cameras nationwide to those who are witness to abuse in their school and who are willing to expose it.” O’Keefe added that he would host a livestream this week “where we will put campus corruption on blast and issuing a clear call to action: it’s time to rip the rot out of America’s education system.” 

American higher education has long been depicted on the right as a hotbed of Marxism. Yet Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA itself could not have been created without institutes of higher learning; it was explicitly created to promote conservative views in high school, college, and university campuses—and it has thrived on many. Kirk himself said earlier this year that he thought his messaging was working, tweeting that he felt college students were becoming more conservative, even if the institutions themselves remained more liberal. 

The right’s renewed pledge to attack universities is just one piece of what the White House has said will be a government-wide push to dismantle “radical” organizations following Kirk’s murder, which Trump has repeatedly blamed on the “radical left.” In practice, this appears to mean threatening left-leaning organizations with defunding and investigation. Speaking on Monday as a guest host of Kirk’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance also threatened to “go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”