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Ninety one percent of undergraduate students believe that words can be violence, according to a new poll by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and College Pulse.
The survey’s findings are especially startling coming in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination — an extreme and tragic example of the sharp difference between words and violence.
“When people start thinking that words can be violence, violence becomes an acceptable response to words,” said FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “Even after the murder of Charlie Kirk at a speaking event, college students think that someone’s words can be a threat. This is antithetical to a free and open society, where words are the best alternative to political violence.”
Five months after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, a wave of lawsuits reveals how Americans were investigated, fired, and in one case, arrested for their online reactions to his death.
The most dramatic case involves Larry Bushart, a retired police officer in Lexington, Tenn. A self-described progressive and "keyboard warrior," he'd been posting memes that mocked Republican officials' mourning over Kirk. Then local police came to his door.
On February 10, 2026, PEN America, joined by a broad group of 36 organizational partners, wrote to the Board of Regents of Texas A&M University to request that they rescind two policies, passed in fall 2025, that have resulted in the censorship of academic courses across the institution, and the announced closure of the University’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program.
The letter explains that these policies are not only a threat to academic freedom, but, put simply, that “Censorship undermines the quality of education that faculty can offer students.” As recent news reports are making clear, these policies are limiting students’ access to education, particularly when it comes to course content related to race, gender, and sexual orientation.
An immigration judge has rejected the Trump administration's efforts to deport Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested last year as part of its targeting of pro-Palestinian campus activists, her lawyers said on Monday.
Lawyers for the Turkish student detailed the immigration judge's decision in a filing
with the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to her release from immigration custody in May.
