EDITORS' CORNER
‘More education = higher support for political violence‘
Part of an American political perspectives survey from 2025 went viral on Sunday in the wake of the third assassination attempt on President Donald Trump’s life.
The survey found that “Americans with the highest level of formal education were also the most supportive of political violence.”
“[Thirty-six] percent of those with a graduate or professional degree agreed at least somewhat with the statement ‘If you are protesting something unjust, it is reasonable to damage property,’ while 40 percent agreed that ‘Violence is often necessary to create social change,'” the survey found.
A post about the survey from last fall went viral Sunday on X — viewed 21 million times — after news that the man who allegedly tried to kill Trump and members of his cabinet at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is a highly educated California man.
Suspect Cole Tomas Allen is a teacher who graduated from Caltech in 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering.
“Allen also earned a master’s degree in computer science at Cal State Dominguez Hills in 2025,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
“His LinkedIn profile picture shows him sitting in his cap and gown with the caption: ‘pretty sure my Master’s in CS is done.’ On his profile he describes himself as a game developer, engineer, scientist and teacher,” the Times reported.
The survey on political violence had queried 3,000 adults and responses were collected between Aug. 3, 2025 and Sept. 26, 2025.
The screenshot on the education and violence correlation was posted by Rob Henderson, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow.
“Relative to Americans with a high school education, Americans with graduate degrees are twice as likely to support political violence. More education = higher support for political violence. It couldn’t be otherwise,” he wrote in his 2025 post.
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