Charlie Kirk’s assassination at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday has increased concerns about security and free speech on college campuses, and university police chiefs are thinking through what the shooting may mean for security at their schools.
The event drew about 3,000 people to an amphitheater-shaped space on campus, and authorities believe the fatal shot was fired from a rooftop overlooking the area. Six university police officers were assigned to the event, and Kirk had his own security detail. Still, some attendees said the security presence felt minimal, noting that there were no bag checks as people entered.
“Any time you have this type of violence, it’s a game changer,” says Richard Beary, who served for more than a decade as police chief at the University of Central Florida. He says there’s no formula for staffing or security measures at events featuring controversial speakers. Instead, he says decisions depend on the level of risk.
“You’re constantly trying to evaluate the security need versus the freedom on campus. It’s a constant balancing act that police chiefs do on a daily basis. And sometimes people don’t like it,” he says. He recalls that after the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, his department overhauled security protocols for large gatherings and football games.
That tension between safety and free expression has long concerned groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Robert Shibley, FIRE’s special counsel for campus advocacy, says violence against speakers strikes at the heart of democratic debate. “Whether it’s Charlie Kirk or Salman Rushdie … these folks who are brave enough to come out and talk about their own controversial views in front of large numbers of people, that’s a fundamental part of how our democracy is supposed to work,” he says. “And there’s nowhere that’s more important than on college campuses.”
Shibley points to FIRE’s latest College Free Speech ranking, released just before the Utah shooting. It includes a survey of student attitudes, including small year-to-year increases in the percentage of students who said it was acceptable to shout down speakers (74%), as well as in the percentage who said using violence was sometimes acceptable to silence certain speech, in at least some cases (34%).
During the last decade, free speech groups accused some colleges of using vague concerns about “safety” as an excuse to cancel events that were likely to attract counter-protesters. The phenomenon is sometimes called the “heckler’s veto.” Now, in the wake of the Kirk shooting, one campus security expert told NPR he worries the new threat to free speech might become the “assassin’s veto.”
Shibley says he shares that worry.
“The more acceptable people see violence as being, the more likely we are to see people resort to that,” Shibley warns. “The real nightmare scenario would be sort of a tit-for-tat escalation, attempting to silence one another with political violence.”
But some campus police chiefs don’t foresee major changes.
“Controversial speakers and high profile people coming to our campuses — that isn’t something that’s new for us,” says Rodney Chatman, vice president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA). He’s also head of campus police at Brown University. He says he expects “a heightened level of diligence around best practices for preparing for those events.”
But he doesn’t think that necessarily means it’ll be impossible to hold large outdoor events involving politically contentious figures.
“Universities are a microcosm of our society. And we still want our colleges and universities to be places where people can come and have an exchange of ideas.” Outdoor events may carry risk, Chatman acknowledges, but they should continue with “more effort, more planning, more shared understanding” among organizers and law enforcement.
Transcript:
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The FBI has released security camera images of what they are calling a person of interest in the shooting yesterday of political activist Charlie Kirk, and they say they’ve recovered the rifle that may have been used. Kirk was killed during an outdoor event at Utah Valley University, which highlights the tension between security and free speech on college campuses. NPR law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste is tracking that. And Martin, tell me a little bit more. What kind of security was there yesterday at the Charlie Kirk event?
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Well, this was a big outdoor event – about 3,000 people in kind of an amphitheater-shaped space. And it’s believed that the shots came – the shot – one shot – came from a rooftop overlooking that area. The university police chief said six officers were working the event. Charlie Kirk also had his own security detail there. But witnesses who were there say that the security felt minimal. For instance, some people say they got into the area without any kind of bag check.
KELLY: Is that typical on a college campus? I’m thinking especially for someone who is politically controversial, like Charlie Kirk.
KASTE: Well, that’s the question I had for Richard Beary. He was a chief of police for 11 years at the University of Central Florida. And that’s a big place – 70,000 students. And during his time, he had a lot of high-profile visitors, including Charlie Kirk, he told me. And he said that there’s no real rule of thumb for how many officers you need for a given size of event or for other factors, such as whether to have checkpoints. And he says, really, the level of security should be a function of the known risk – of what police are hearing about potential threats, what this person has inspired in other places. And they look at what’s happening elsewhere in the country, such as what happened yesterday at UVU.
RICHARD BEARY: Anytime you have this type of violence, it’s a game changer. You’re constantly trying to evaluate the security need versus the freedom on campus. It’s a constant balancing act that police chiefs do on a daily basis. And sometimes people don’t like it.
KASTE: As an example, he says, back in 2016, after the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub there in Orlando, that they redid their whole security layout for big events and football games.
KELLY: Yeah, I want to go back to that point he made about freedom on campus. Free speech has been such a live issue on college campuses for other reasons in recent months. Could incidents like this make it less likely that campuses will invite controversial speakers?
KASTE: Well, there’s no doubt that’s a concern for people like Robert Shibley. He’s the special counsel for campus Advocacy at FIRE. You may have heard them – that’s the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Every year, that group does a survey of college students, and the 2025 survey just came out right before the Utah shooting. It showed a slight increase in the percentage of students who say it’s acceptable to shout down certain speakers. That’s at 72%. And there was an increase in how many say it’s acceptable to use violence, at least in some cases, to shut down a speaker. That was up a couple of points to 34%.
ROBERT SHIBLEY: The more acceptable people see violence as being, the more likely we are to see people resort to that. And, you know, the real nightmare scenario would be sort of a tit-for-tat escalation, attempting to silence one another with political violence.
KELLY: Is there reason, Martin, to believe – is there data to support the idea that this kind of violence is trending up on college campuses?
KASTE: You know, campus security experts tell me, no. They say, if anything, things were probably worse seven or eight years ago, back during the first Trump administration when some of these alt-right provocateurs such as Milo Yiannopoulos would go to campuses and sort of provoke a big reaction. And during those years, free speech groups such as FIRE would accuse the colleges of using undefined safety concerns as an excuse to cancel or restrict those appearances. That phenomenon was sometimes called the heckler’s veto. And anecdotally, security experts say now that has become a lot rarer, but after this shooting, one of them said he hopes we won’t be seeing a new kind of veto when it comes to free speech – what he called the assassin’s veto.
KELLY: Wow. NPR’s Martin Kaste, thank you.
KASTE: You’re welcome.