Charles H.F. Davis III called Kirk’s killing a ‘solution’
A University of Michigan professor whose research has been funded by the Gates Foundation and Harvard University defended the assassination of Charlie Kirk, asserting the conservative activist spread hate speech and “should not be mourned or celebrated.”
Charles H.F. Davis III, who teaches at the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, called Kirk’s killing a “solution” to what he asserted are the “violent conditions and violent rhetoric spewed by empowered people that create them.”
“Charlie Kirk is not a martyr,” Davis wrote. Kirk, a 31-year-old husband and father of two, was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University on Wednesday during a nationwide campus tour for Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA.
According to Davis, he has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in research funding from the Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation, Spencer Foundation, the National Academy of Education, and the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity.
A spokeswoman for the University of Michigan said the school does not take a position on Davis’s comments.
“In accordance with the university’s Institutional Neutrality policy, the university does not take positions on matters not directly connected to university governance. Faculty members are free to speak and debate issues of the day; but, to be clear, those individual expressions do not represent the views of the university,” Kay Jarvis, the director of the university’s office of public affairs, told the Washington Free Beacon.
Davis, who teaches courses on “Anti-Racism” at the University of Michigan, has worked at the school since 2020. He founded the Campus Abolition Research Lab that same year to “disrupt and dismantle the carceral university” and create “police-free futures.” That initiative came under scrutiny in 2023 after two shootings and five sex crimes occurred at the school, the Free Beacon reported.
Davis received $473,000 from the Gates Foundation in 2022 for a research contract to explore “Improving Equity in Campus Racial and Socioeconomic Climate Through Institutional Transformation,” according to his academic resume. The Gates charity gave $20,000 to Davis in 2020 for a research paper entitled, “Assessing the Black Student Debt Crisis.”
He received $289,000 from Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child in 2023 to research “diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging” in the workplace.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the United Negro College Fund have also provided funding to Davis, who previously lectured at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California.
The Gates Foundation and Davis did not respond to requests for comment.
President Donald Trump called Kirk, a close ally, a “martyr for truth and freedom,” and ordered flags be flown at half-staff through Sunday.
While many Democrats condemned the shooting, some liberal politicians and media figures used the tragedy to call for more gun control and accuse Republicans of stoking political violence.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D.) expressed condolences for Kirk, but said Trump “often foments” political violence. Political operative Matthew Dowd appeared to blame Kirk for his own death in an MSNBC segment, stating, “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” MSNBC fired Dowd on Wednesday.
Read the full article here
