After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot on Utah Valley University‘s campus on Sept. 10, some progressive-leaning students and employees of universities across the country openly celebrated the attack and Kirk’s death. They pitched this online and social media hate, apparently unaware that it could have negative repercussions for them or their institutions.

To date, there have been “at least 20 university employees who have been fired or suspended for online posts about Charlie Kirk,” Jennifer Kabbany, editor-in-chief of the College Fix, told the Washington Examiner. The ranks of the fired include “a mix of administrators, staffers, professors, and adjuncts,” she said.

The College Fix functions almost as a trade publication for reporting on progressive campus activism by students and faculty. (Full disclosure: this writer worked there briefly, several years ago.) The figure was admittedly an undercount, but when Kabbany tallied it up on Oct. 7, about a month after Kirk’s assassination, it was in the ballpark.

Kabbany added that “many more [college employees] have faced demands for their termination,” and that her tally of those fired or disciplined thus far “does not include K-12,” where there have been additional suspensions and firings.

Kirk, 31 years old at the time of his death, was a co-founder of Turning Point USA. He spent a great deal of time and effort on college campuses, inviting all comers to debate him on matters ranging from taxation to abortion to transgenderism to gun rights, while growing his organization in the process.

Kirk was seen as a particularly effective antagonist to campus leftism and to the progressive project as a whole. His organizing efforts made a huge difference to President Donald Trump’s White House comeback effort in the 2024 election, by Trump’s own admission. So it made a certain amount of grotesque sense that many campus progressives were not sorry to see Kirk go.

However, the mass celebration of his death, and therefore of political violence, was particularly ill-timed for academia. Demented cheering was broadcast on social media so loudly that many not-terribly-political Americans took notice. It came at a time when the Trump administration was already trying to cancel billions of dollars in federally committed funding for universities, and exacting serious concessions.

It’s probably fair to say that the last thing many college administrators who were being raked over the coals for their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, and occasionally violent pro-Palestinian campus protests, needed at that particular moment was another headache from an adjunct justifying the political assassination of a close Trump ally.

Kirk effect in the workplace

Surprisingly, this Kirk effect may have a greater negative effect on employment for those outside the academy. Complex disciplinary processes and academic freedom make firing tricky, but much of the rest of the American economy has “at will” employment. This allows both employers and employees to sever the relationship more cleanly, without automatically running afoul of various labor laws.

That legal status can simplify matters, especially when paired with legally binding separation agreements. Workers who take post-employment payouts waive their rights to sue employers. Separation agreements are usually paired with nondisparagement and nondisclosure agreements, as well as company policies that muzzle most managers from discussing personnel matters with the press, to keep things damped down.

We have seen scattered reports of workers in the private sector being fired, suspended, or doxxed over their gleeful online comments about Kirk’s demise. “Nurse put on leave at major hospital after comments supporting Charlie Kirk’s death,” is one representative headline from Fox News on Sept. 16. New survey data suggest this phenomenon is widespread, that a significant number of workers have lost jobs, and that more might in the future.

About 1 in 7 American companies has punished employees over social media comments related to Kirk’s killing. The Kirk effect appears to be intensifying amid a broader crackdown on people popping off online. These are a few findings from a survey of more than 1,200 business leaders commissioned by the business site Resume Templates and released at the end of September.

The survey found that 29% of companies have experienced increased disciplinary conflict over the past six months related to their workers’ political posts, and 25% of firms have disciplined a worker in the past 30 days. Among those companies with conflicts, 72% said Kirk’s assassination only intensified the clashes.

Company discipline can take many different forms. The three most common forms were suspension (39%), often without pay, and reprimand (30%), both of which ran ahead of firings (26%). What that means in practice, with a workforce of roughly 170 million spread across the country, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, is that at least thousands of American workers likely lost their jobs over their reactions to Kirk’s death. More workers either missed work or were warned what would happen if they did something similar in the future.

Many companies haven’t seen things getting better, with 49% of respondents saying that workers’ political speech on social media will lead to more clashes and be a greater liability in 2026, a midterm election year. Roughly one-third of firms (32%) have tightened their social media policies in the last six months, versus only 2% that have relaxed their policies. This has created a ratchet in the direction of more restrictive corporate speech policies.

An HR turning point?

When asked why they tightened their social media policies, those company officials who have done so had a whole host of answers. They said they did so to protect brand reputation (68%), prevent internal conflicts (61%), avoid customer backlash (56%), skirt legal matters (56%), and prevent government retaliation (36%).

Of note is that greater corporate social media restrictions advanced in tandem with the efforts of many large firms to get workers back into the office after COVID-19 lockdowns reshaped the American workplace. Most past callbacks had failed. Workers told managers, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and got other jobs that offered remote or at least hybrid working conditions.

This year was a little bit different. With the economy softening and the job market deteriorating, workers at firms from Amazon to Boeing to Dell who want to hold on to their jobs are being pulled back in.

Some workplace analysts are unhappy about both of these trends.

“Stricter social media rules, which some may view as invasive or controlling, can backfire on recruiting and retention,” Julia Toothacre, a career strategist for Resume Templates, warned in a statement. “The more restrictive the policy, the less attractive the company becomes to top talent, similar to what we’ve seen with unpopular return-to-office mandates.”

TRUMP FRAMES KIRK KILLING AS ATTACK ON MOVEMENT: ‘THE BULLET WAS AIMED AT ALL OF US’

Toothacre said she is also worried about workplace mistrust that more restrictive policies fuel.

“When employees feel watched or fear being reported by co-workers, it erodes culture and makes collaboration harder,” she warned.

Labor economics highlights the gap between what workers can confidently demand in a tight labor market and what they are forced to accept when unemployment is higher and new positions are scarce. Kirk was fatally shot when American workers enjoyed less leverage than they had had in quite some time. This job scarcity is likely to mean more restrictions across the board — on their time and on their speech.

Jeremy Lott is the author of many books, most recently The Three Feral Pigs and the Vegan Wolf.

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