ABSTRACT The terrorizing placement of nooses and Nazi swastikas on U.S. college and university campuses has sustained a climate of fear, trauma, and intimidation. University administration responses often invoke protest from targeted communities over their approach. Examining news reports and university statements between 2010 and 2023, we critique universities’ use of the rhetorical framework of “symbols” (e.g., “heinous symbols of hate,” “racist symbols”). We argue that the “symbolism” framework reflects and reinforces a problem of minimization, if not dismissal, when responding to the impact of these events. Drawing on works by rhetorical studies scholars like Matsuda, Altman, Butler, and Ore, we argue that nooses and swastikas must be understood and treated in relation to their material, violent, spatial, and agential oppressive power and viewed through the relationship between the academic environment of white Christian spaces and anti-Black and anti-Jewish violence and exclusion. Coining the term, “technologies of violence,” we invite a rhetorical shift from hate speech and symbols to acts of violent doing and doing to within the context of historical and contemporary phenomena of systemic racism and antisemitism in academia and society. We offer an anti-racist approach to responding to and studying terroristic objects and acts on campuses.