By Vivian Rose
The limits of institutional freedom of speech are not new. But in states like South Carolina, these limits have made themselves more pronounced than in the past.
On Sept. 10, Charlie Kirk, a conservative political activist, was shot and killed while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. In the moments, days and weeks afterward, social media went abuzz with commentary about what had happened on the campus—some of which came from professors at other colleges, universities, and high schools.
Some educators were fired from their teaching positions, despite pretenses of academic freedom, the First Amendment, and Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which states federal employers cannot discriminate against their employees on account of their political affiliation. However, professors teaching at public universities are considered state employees.
The dozens of professors across the country fired after making comments about Kirk’s death all came around the same time as when South Carolina’s Clemson University began letting go staff.
It’s not just university professors that have been penalized for their remarks made on gun violence and Charlie Kirk’s assassination. A columnist from the Washington Post was reportedly fired after an 11-year tenure over “addressing political violence, race and gun control” on her private social media.
Graham Piro, a Faculty Legal Defense Fund Fellow at Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said the foundation has seen a recent rise in on-campus firings since Kirk’s death. “There was a deluge of faculty firing, suspensions, and other discipline not just toward the faculty, but also public staff members and public university staff members,” Piro said. “We also saw a lot of local government workers getting fired, all for speech about Charlie Kirk and Charlie Kirk’s assassination.”
During his life, Kirk was most-well known for co-founding Turning Point USA, posthumously receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Donald Trump and getting recognized by Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List from 2018, acknowledging Kirk as “the youngest speaker at the 2016 Republican National Convention.”
One of Kirk’s mentors and an inspiration behind founding TPUSA, was David Horowitz, founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Although once a self-identified Marxist, Horowitz spent the latter part of his life arguing against reparations for slavery, “Islamo-fascism,” and defending the “moral, cultural and economic foundations” of societies attacked by left-leaning politicians. He spoke of his ideals almost exclusively on college campuses, believing they were hubs for leftist propaganda. He even published a book in 2006 targeting educators with whom he disagreed, titled, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.
TPUSA, “a movement rooted in faith, freedom, and love of country,” as it says on the main webpage, seeks to get student activists involved by promoting the first amendment on college campuses. However, Kirk used his platform not only to preach his values on college campuses, but to develop the site, Professor Watchlist, which seeks to censor professors from around the country who discriminate against conservative students and who “advance leftist propaganda.” Professors are highlighted on the site for decentering whiteness in their teaching, publishing articles on feminist pedagogy, criticizing white nationalism among other reasons. The watchlist eerily resembles the efforts of Horowitz.
It’s clear that the pressure is on nationwide for university professors and their free speech. Of the three employees fired from Clemson after making comments about Kirk’s death, Joshua Bregy, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, has been the most vocal.
According to the ACLU South Carolina, Bregy, “a highly qualified assistant professor,” was fired by Clemson after several state politicians claimed they would defund the university. The university posted on X that, “[Clemson] will take decisive and appropriate action in cases where speech is not protected under the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment.” Public institutions like Clemson are legally bound by the First Amendment, which, according to Piro, means they must operate with the First Amendment’s protections for free speech and academic freedom.
Professors like Bregy were seemingly fired for their political beliefs, rather than for expressing speech unprotected by the First Amendment. Unprotected speech is known as a true threat: “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”
“Merely celebrating a death, murder, saying Kirk got what he deserved, or something like that, can be offensive,” Piro said. “But if there’s no threat to commit an unlawful act of violence in the future, then it’s protected. Celebrations, justifications, advocacy for violence, are all protected speech under the First Amendment. So, there’s a very high bar that must be approached.”
It’s worth noting that the bar is indeed high for public employee speech to become punishable. It must disrupt the workplace so substantially that it requires an employer to mitigate the situation in order to maintain an efficient working environment for other employees, according to Piro.
Under South Carolina law, § 16-17-560, the first amendment protects employees from being fired for their political views; however, Attorney General Alan Wilson used his authority to protect Clemson from a criminal prosecution for firing the professors under such pretext, writing in a letter to Clemson’s president, that the law “poses no obstacle” to fire the individuals.
Firings like the ones that happened on Clemson’s university are happening across the country on campuses in states like Florida, Texas, and South Dakota. Cases like Joshua Bregy’s call into question how the first amendment is invoked to punish university professors, instead of uplifting educators’ speech. But when should professors really be called out for unprotected speech?
So, what makes a public employee, public?
“Threats of imminent violence lie outside the protections of the First Amendment.”
These are the continuing words of South Carolina’s Attorney General as he makes the claim that professors at Clemson should be fired for their “defamatory” language against the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Speech categorized as defamatory, fraudulent, and perjurious is unprotected speech, while political expression is perfectly legal under the First Amendment, which both public and private university professors engage in almost daily while teaching. It is unclear whether the comments made about Kirk’s assassination have been deemed as unprotected speech by courts at the time of publication.
However, a University of South Dakota professor, Michael Hook, was reinstated by a judge after being fired for comments he made about Kirk’s assassination on his private Facebook page. Siding with the professor, the district court judge ruled: “The court concludes that Hook spoke as a citizen and his speech was on a matter of public concern.”
To break down the law, it’s important to understand the difference between a private and public citizen. Private citizens are not classified as officials or have official roles in given situations. However, public citizens are those that hold positions of authority or responsibility within the government or a public service, including state university professors. Their words hold more weight within the context of free speech because they represent the interests of the public, or a public entity.
But there are exceptions.
A public citizen does not always remain as such; university professors and even federal and government workers have private lives and free time. In the Supreme Court case Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Court held that a public employee’s first amendment rights apply only in a private context—when the employee is not fulfilling their duties as a public employee.
“Faculty members, safe to say, are very rarely deputized to specifically speak on behalf of an institution, as just in their role as a faculty member,” Piro said. “[Someone may be] deputized in a role as a chair, as an administrator, but … just identifying themselves as a member of a university does not mean that they are automatically speaking on behalf of the university. When they are speaking as private citizens, they enjoy the same first amendment rights that you and I do when we speak as private citizens.”
Many of the professors fired over recent months posted their comments about Kirk’s unfortunate death on private social media accounts, some of which got very little traction. In some cases, like Bregy’s, members of the Clemson College Republicans caught wind of the post, giving it the attention it received that ultimately led to the professor’s firing.
“This has definitely been a trying couple of months where a lot of institutions were, we think, abdicating their First Amendment obligations,” Piro said. “It’s going to be interesting to see, as the dust settles, … how courts view this, and whether they come down on the side of the First Amendment or side with institutions.”
Now just days into 2026, the repercussions of several of the firings are coming back to universities.
In Texas, Austin Peay State University reinstated a professor it fired over a repost of a headline quoting Kirk’s views on gun violence. The professor, Darren Michael, will be reimbursed for therapy and counseling services and will be paid $500,000 by the university. And as for Bregy at Clemson, while he won’t be able to teach any classes for the upcoming term, he will be paid a full salary and receive benefits until the end of the semester. It seems for now, that professors are only paid to be quiet.
Vivian Rose is an award-winning journalist and published poet. She is a media associate at the Park Center of Independent Media and an editorial intern at Ms. magazine. Vivian received a B.A. from Ithaca College in Journalism.