Black Students Blast NYU Safety Response after Threats Following Charlie Kirk Murder

Black students are blasting NYU’s initial response to a hate email manifesto sent to some students that they said very specifically targeted blacks and even displayed an automatic that the poser said would be used to kill them. Several groups are demanding a formal apology from NYU’s Campus Safety department for what they say was a lack of transparency in the announcements on 9/11.

In an initial university-wide email, Campus Safety dismissed the threat as a “likely hoax,” a choice that students argue minimized the gravity of the situation.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, has had a rippling effect on campuses nationwide, including at NYU.

Kirk was killed the day before 9/11, and two vigils were held downtown in his memory as Straus Media papers previously reported,

In the wake of Kirk’s death, Black students at NYU say they were confronted with racially charged threats that they felt directly tied to the heightened political climate.

For many, Kirk’s legacy was not simply as a conservative commentator but as someone who built his platform by challenging left-leaning college students in highly publicized debates.

His criticisms of so-called “woke culture”—a broad label that has often encompassed racial justice movements and Black student activism—made his assassination a flashpoint moment. Some students fear that anger over his killing is being redirected toward them.

According to the student-run Washington Square News, the threats were sent at around 11 a.m. on 9/11. Many students took to social media to share screenshots and express concerns over what they viewed as a slow and inadequate response from Campus Safety.

Within two and a half hours of the emails targeting Black members of the community, Campus Safety head Fountain Walker sent his first university-wide message.

In that email, he described the threat as a “despicable racist threat of violence” but did not specify that it explicitly targeted Black students and faculty.

Later that afternoon, around 4 p.m., Walker issued a second message confirming that the threat was unfounded but acknowledging more directly that the language had threatened “violence at the Black members of our community” and deserved “forceful condemnation.”

The campus’s Black Student Union (BSU) released a statement denouncing the university’s handling of the incident.

“Whether hoax or not, it is clear that agitators have a mission to destroy any feeling of belonging or inclusion that Black students have at this campus,” BSU wrote on Instagram. “The willful withholding of critical, time-sensitive safety information from Black students represents the wrong solution to this problem.”

Straus News has reached out to BSU NYU for comment and contacted the NYPD to see what involvement, if any, it had in the proceedings but had not heard back at pressime.

The Black Law Students Association (BLSA) backed BSU’s call for accountability, criticizing the inconsistencies in how Black students and faculty were treated under direct threats compared with other groups.

“NYU treated instances of antisemitic hate crimes or actions explicitly and then offered to reach out and consult the targets of it immediately,” College of Arts and Science junior Sebastian Leon Martinez, a member of NYU’s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, told Washington Square News. “With anti-Black violence, it was not as clear. It was not directly proportional in its response.”

The joint statement from Campus Safety head Fountain Walker and NYU President Linda Mills was issued on Sept. 14. NYU published it on its website.

In this message, they condemned the threats as “vile, reprehensible racist language” and announced plans to hold an information session on campus safety protocols. Straus News has reached out to Walker and Campus Safety.

The Guardian reported that swatting-style threats were sent to more than a dozen universities across the country, including historically Black colleges and universities such as Alabama State and Hampton University. Many of those schools responded with precautionary lockdowns or campus-wide pauses. NYU did not order a lockdown and continued normal operations.