Clemson donors threatened to yank funding over Charlie Kirk

CLEMSON — It began with a tweet and ended with Clemson in the national spotlight.

The day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated Sept. 10 in front of a crowd on a Utah college campus, a group of Republican college students at Clemson University posted screenshots to their X account of derogatory posts about Kirk’s death written and reposted by Clemson professor Melvin Earl Villaver.

Then came a post referencing another Clemson professor’s commentary. Then, a third university employee.

The result was three firings at one of South Carolina's top universities, expedited by powerful and well-connected supporters.

Through a public records request, The Post and Courier obtained more than a thousand pages of university records that, along with federal court records from