Campus Attacks: Targeted Violence Affecting Institutions of Higher Education

摘要

This report provides an overview of these incidents and the involved subjects, discusses initial observations regarding behaviors of the subjects, and offers preliminary considerations regarding the data that may have relevance to threat assessment. While the participating agencies are aware of the limitations of an open-source descriptive review, this preliminary effort will be complemented by a more in-depth study to be conducted by the Department of Education and the FBI. For this paper, researchers relied on open-source information to capture the nature and magnitude of violence affecting Americas colleges and universities. Therefore, the observations and recommendations are necessarily limited, and readers should be cautious to avoid drawing broad-based conclusions. What is offered here, then, is not the end of the process, but a preliminary look at the scope of this issue. Several of the key elements explored included the attackers intent with regard to target selection, interpersonal relationships, personal stressors, and triggering events. Each of these elements seemingly played a significant role in the offenders decision to commit an act of violence. In nearly three-quarters of the captured incidents, the offender appeared to have targeted one or more specifically named individuals. Only in a small percentage of the cases was there some indication that random persons were also targeted along with specific individuals. Hence, understanding what leads an offender to exclusively target random individuals remains a complex and difficult challenge.