Staff Reports
Judicial Watch has just dropped a new stack of university emails that should make anyone who still trusts campus virtue-signaling do a double take. The group says 133 pages of GRAMA records show Utah Valley University faculty privately denouncing Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated on campus and urging university leaders not to memorialize him. If true, these messages show a glaring gap between UVU’s public talk about unity and what some inside the school were actually thinking. Let’s stop pretending shock and piety are the same thing.
What the Records Show
Judicial Watch says the 133-page release includes emails and text-message excerpts where faculty call Charlie Kirk “divisive” and argue, bluntly, that “To memorialize him would be a grave mistake.” One quoted instructor even wrote, “Charlie Kirk appealed to the worst of us. He spoke his prejudices openly… That is why we must resist any effort to memorialize him or turn him into an icon.” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton commented that these private notes clash with UVU’s public calls for civil discourse. The group also ties this release to earlier records about cleaning and paving over the event site—details that have already raised questions about transparency.
Why This Matters to Every Parent and Taxpayer
This isn’t just campus gossip. It’s about whether public universities live by their own slogans. UVU said it would review the shooting, promote healing and defend free speech. Yet these messages suggest some faculty were happy to erase a conservative speaker’s memory. Families are suing and investigators are still examining security failures. If a public university treats a murdered speaker as a political problem instead of a human being, that is a moral and administrative failure. Parents and taxpayers deserve answers, not spin.
Accountability and Next Steps
First, UVU must go on the record. Release the full GRAMA production, explain redactions, and identify who wrote those messages. Second, the university should explain how it decides what to memorialize and whether faculty private statements violate policy. Third, independent oversight must finish the security review and respond to the family’s wrongful-death notice. If a school wants to lecture America about tolerance, it might try practicing it before lecturing. And if Judicial Watch’s release is the only thing exposing this, then the university’s transparency efforts need more than nice-sounding initiatives.
Judicial Watch deserves credit for forcing light into a messy corner, but document drops are only the start. Reporters should verify the records, seek on-the-record responses from UVU and anyone quoted, and compel meaningful action. The public needs to know whether a public university’s private conversations match its public promises. No campus should get a pass for cruelty or hypocrisy—especially when the cost was a human life.
