Bomb threats against colleges jumped drastically in 2022, new federal data show.
In 2021 institutions of higher education fielded 64 threats. The number spiked to 353 in 2022 — a roughly 450-percent increase — according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ annual “Explosives Incident Report,” which was released this week.
Educational facilities, which included elementary and secondary schools along with colleges, were by far the top targets of bomb threats in 2022, receiving 1,165. Offices and businesses were the second-most targeted, at 259.
Though the report doesn’t break down the numbers by campus, it does provide the first official data-driven glimpse behind a string of bomb threats that generated significant media attention in recent years. Three Ivy League institutions and several public colleges in Ohio were targeted in the fall of 2021, prompting evacuations. The threats were later deemed not credible, but they prompted a wave of unease across campuses nationwide. They were followed, in February 2022, by threats to more than 50 historically Black colleges and universities.
To put those threats in context, there are 99 HBCUs in the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In other words, over half of the nation’s HBCUs received bomb threats last year, in the span of just a few months.
The FBI quickly began an investigation into the pattern of incidents, deeming them “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism.” Law enforcement officers identified six minors that February as persons of interest in its investigation.
Bomb threats should not be a normal part of the campus experience.
HBCU leaders grew increasingly frustrated with the pace of the investigation, though, and in October 2022, the Congressional Bipartisan HBCU Caucus wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director Christopher Wray of the FBI, urging the administration to help connect HBCUs with more funding for campus safety while they waited for the outcome of the investigation.
“Bomb threats should not be a normal part of the campus experience,” members of the caucus wrote. “Many students may become, or have become, desensitized to these threats of violence directed toward themselves and campus communities.”
The FBI ultimately charged just one minor in November 2022 with making the majority of the threats.
Due to a methodology change, it’s difficult to compare the new data on bomb threats with that from pre-pandemic years. For the 2021 report, the agency tacked on a second threat-tracking metric, making the data more comprehensive. In previous years, the ATF relied only on data from its Bomb Arson Tracking System, the federal government’s main repository for explosive- and arson-related incidents. It now also incorporates threats tracked on the Technical Resource for Incident Prevention, or TRIPwire, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database that pulls from open-source publications and government-issued threat bulletins and advisories.
The Chronicle submitted open-records requests to Homeland Security and the ATF for the full TRIPwire and BATS data sets through 2015. The agencies have not yet fulfilled those requests.
Dan Bauman contributed to this report.
