After a two-day manhunt last week, authorities arrested a suspect on Friday in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, the CEO and founder of Turning Point USA, a youth-focused right-wing organization.

There is no clear motive connected to the suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. But that hasn’t stopped certain conservative leaders from identifying a villain in the attack: colleges.

“You heard the family members say that this man became more political in recent years. What did he do in recent years? He went to college,” Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said Friday during an interview on Fox News. “That is where kids are getting radicalized. Not just online. Our campuses are where a lot of radicalization, hate and intolerance starts from.”

Robinson attended Utah State University for one semester in 2021 before dropping out, the school said in a statement. He then enrolled in a technical college. Utah Valley University, where the shooting occurred, is about two hours away from Utah State.

But conservatives have coalesced around the idea that Robinson was radicalized while attending college, and are using the shooting to speak out broadly against higher education. (Although some Republicans, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, have said Robinson embraced “leftist ideology,” the suspect’s political beliefs are not clear.)

“Our universities, in many cases, have become incubators for extremism,” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said on a Fox News appearance on Friday. “They have become the equivalent of madrasas for jihadism,” he said, using the Arabic word for educational institutions.

Kari Lake, a close Trump ally and the senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, weighed in at a memorial service for Kirk at the Kennedy Center on Sunday.

“How does a 22-year-old become so filled with hate?” asked Lake, who has embraced numerous conspiracy theories. “Five years earlier, I was told, he was a Trump supporter, and we send our kids off to college, and they brainwashed them.”

“I am making a plea to mothers,” she added. “Do not send your children into these indoctrination camps. Do not do it.”

Notably, Kirk himself embraced the idea of using colleges as a place to spread his organization’s message. Turning Point USA, which he founded in 2012 with Bill Montgomery, has 900 campus chapters.

Kirk was known for going to colleges and setting up “prove me wrong” tables where would engage in debates with college students. The podcaster often advocated for lax gun laws and frequently made incendiary comments about Black people, women, immigrants and his political opponents.

Kirk was on the first stop of his latest tour across college campuses when he was shot. He was sitting in front of a crowd of about 3,000 people and had just answered a question about mass shootings when gunfire rang out.

Conservatives aren’t just suggesting college radicalized the suspect; they’re also calling for a dismantling of higher education institutions.

“Tyler Robinson is every conservative parent’s worst nightmare,” Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing political commentator and author, said on X on Friday. “Send your kid to college where he is radicalized into a violent ‘antifascist’ by the sly, scheming leftist professors.”

“We need to put radical academia on trial along with its cherished product, Tyler Robinson,” he wrote.

Right-wing anti-Islam activist and noted conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer has also advocated for American universities to be punished for Kirk’s death.

“It’s time to defund American universities. You don’t need to go to college. Charlie Kirk didn’t go to college,” she said on X on Sunday.

The rush to frame higher education as the culprit in Kirk’s killing is an extension of the right’s war on colleges, which has received a big boost from the Trump administration.

Since January, the federal government has sought to control the admissions and hiring practices of elite universities.

In February, Trump signed an executive order saying that all public schools must get rid of their diversity programs. The Department of State revoked international student visas and has subjected foreign college students to extra scrutiny, alleging they are importing dangerous beliefs.

Trump also demanded that several Ivy League universities, including Harvard and Columbia, prioritize enrolling students who support “American values” and promoting right-leaning professors. Universities that didn’t comply were threatened with loss of federal funding, which would impact scientific research.