New public records indicate that faculty members at Utah Valley University sent hostile messages regarding Charlie Kirk to the university's administrators in the weeks following his assassination on the UVU campus, even though the university had previously issued public statements advocating civility and free expression.
Judicial Watch obtained the 133 pages of emails and text messages through a Utah Government Records Access and Management Act request. The records went to then-UVU President Astrid S. Tuminez and other administrators.
Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated on the UVU campus while launching a nationwide campus speaking tour. University administrators spent the following months talking about healing and dialogue. Some of the correspondence flowing into the university president's inbox tells a different story.
On September 22, 2025, a UVU instructor wrote to Tuminez, framing Kirk as a threat to "students we are trying to educate." Kirk "appealed to the worst of us," the instructor wrote, adding that he "spoke his prejudices openly, not to test free speech, but to shape minds," and that he "targeted impressionable youth, feeding on their fears and anxieties."
The email continued:
The hidden message in his rants was clear: hate is natural, and to resist it is to deny who you are. Hate masquerading as justice is nothing of the sort. True justice seeks fairness, accountability, and protection for all, while hate targets, divides, and destroys....
That is why we must resist any effort to memorialize him or turn him into an icon.... Charlie Kirk did not stand for civility, compassion, or truth. There was nothing civil about him.
The instructor closed by warning that "to memorialize him would be a grave mistake."
A second email, dated November 4, 2025 and signed as a "faculty member," escalated the anti-Kirk venom.
I've had a hard time dealing with the aftermath of the shooting on our campus, and in particular, I cannot understand how people could support or mourn someone who was so divisive and spewed such vituperation in his "debates." I regret that he was invited to UVU at all, and wish you had rethought the decision to allow him a forum on our campus.
That faculty member then turned to the proposed campus memorial, warning administrators that the Utah legislature holds "enormous power" and predicting a mass faculty exodus if UVU honored Kirk.
"Should a memorial to him be erected on our campus, I fear you will lose many faculty members, including myself," the email said. The same faculty member closed with a threat dressed as principle, writing, "I would not work at a university that supports Charlie Kirk's ideals in any way."
Nine days after the assassination, someone whose name Judicial Watch redacted from the release pitched the university on a different project. The pitch called for a $1 million fundraising drive named "Our Better Selves for a Better America."
"I would like to raise $1 million for this proposal," it read. "I have one pledge for $100k. I would like to raise the other $900k quickly."
UVU ran with it. The university launched Our Better Selves for a Better America as an official presidential initiative built around civil dialogue, conflict navigation, and peacemaking.
"The killing of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, was a grievous tragedy that reverberated through the Utah Valley University (UVU) community and nation. It challenged civility, respectful disagreement, and freedom of speech - core freedoms written in the United States Constitution," the university's webpage about the initiative reads. "In the wake of this tragedy, UVU President Astrid S. Tuminez, Ph.D., asked, 'What is this moment asking of us? Of UVU? Of the nation?'"
While the university publicly promoted civility and open discourse, the correspondence landing in its president's inbox ran the other way.
"Charlie Kirk was assassinated while exercising his right to speak on a college campus," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. "These records reveal that, even as Utah Valley University publicly called for free expression and civil discourse, some faculty members were making hateful and vicious comments about him, objecting to his invitation to campus, and threatening to leave if his memory were honored."
Charlie Kirk's family moved this month to put Utah Valley University and state officials on notice that it intends to sue, accusing the school of security failures that let his assassination happen.
"Placing a politically controversial figure like Charlie Kirk in an outdoor event in the quad surrounded by tall buildings and other elevated observation platforms is accurately described as walking him into a fishbowl," the notice of claim read.
"Through a series of stunning failures and reckless decisions, the UVU Parties created a foreseeable danger to Charlie," the document continued. "Those decisions ultimately rendered Mr. Kirk helpless to the rooftop shooter in an assassination that could have been avoided had the UVU Parties only taken reasonable steps to plan and oversee a safe event, steps outlined below that have been standard practice for other universities hosting controversial speakers."