What Charlie Kirk Taught Me About Being Conservative On a Liberal Campus

On navigating conservative values in an environment that rebukes them.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

When I ran the Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR) Activities Day table this year, as co-president of the club, it was the first time I’d publicly identified myself as a conservative. While most people approached the table with genuine interest in our club—one passerby exclaimed, “Wow, you exist?”—others came to mock us or argue.

Among the latter group was a girl who asked us what we had to say to the millions of Americans who were having their healthcare taken away by Donald Trump. I calmly asked her to name an example, using a strategy I’d learned from watching Charlie Kirk. The girl mentioned her hometown in Virginia and the struggles of the area’s rural hospital system. I explained my belief that rural hospitals should primarily be the responsibility of state governments. The exchange turned to other topics, and while heated, it ended with us shaking hands.

A few weeks later, I was sitting in class and reloading the news with my heart racing after I’d learned that Charlie Kirk had been shot. He’d been at one of his speaking events where he sat behind a table under a tent that read “Prove Me Wrong” and debated students on everything from gun rights to transgenderism. Much like I was at the club fair, Kirk was being a conservative in public, and for that, he’d been shot in the neck. After an agonizing half-hour, President Trump put out a Truth Social post confirming that Charlie Kirk was dead.

I came across Kirk’s videos post October 7 during my freshman year, at a time when I felt starved for dialogue on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a Zionist, I’d tried to talk across the aisle at several of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that academic year, only to have been strongly rebuffed. One girl even told me, “I don’t talk to white people.” In my classes, I found professors who were so entrenched in their liberal worldviews that they could not conceive of the idea that any of the intelligent, polite students sitting in front of them could possibly be conservative Trump supporters. Automatically, they spoke of Republicans as a problem and Trump as an almost Hitlerian figure, never guessing that I was planning to vote for him in the 2024 election. Looking back, I know my professors didn’t mean to stifle dialogue and dissent in their classrooms, but as a nervous freshman seeking a good GPA, I felt obligated to parrot what my professors were saying, training myself day by day to live a lie.

In his videos, I saw Charlie Kirk do what seemed impossible for me: defend conservative ideas openly and emphatically on a college campus. Even though I don’t agree with all of his views, I admired him for being a courageous voice for thousands of conservative college students in America who don’t speak their minds out of fear of academic and social consequences.

Watching him articulate his positions also taught me about debate and dialogue. His arguments, especially the ones I disagreed with, forced me to think through my own beliefs and refine my convictions. I learned what an “argument from authority” is, picked up some reading recommendations, and felt a little less alone in my beliefs.

To right-leaning students at Columbia, Charlie Kirk was an icon. At a recent CUCR meeting, I asked who had watched Charlie Kirk’s videos. All of the people in the room—about thirty—raised their hands.

Gabriela Mendoza, a senior majoring in political science, said that Charlie Kirk exemplified “conservatives and what they are willing to do. Not only do they defend their viewpoints but [they] are willing to understand and debate the other side more than any other group, and live in a world that constantly demonizes them.” She also noted the lack of acknowledgement from the administration and professors. Conservatives, “already silenced in class, are ignored by the administration.”

Christina Ma, Vice President of CUCR and founder of Columbia’s Turning Point USA chapter, noted that “Charlie was killed just for having opinions that are shared by millions of Americans. He was not a politician. He was just a guy who talked to people who disagreed with him on college campuses. If they want him dead for thinking and saying what he says, then they want millions of conservatives dead too.”

In the days since Kirk’s assassination, many prominent liberals have come out to condemn political violence. That’s a good start, but the approach is not being echoed here at Columbia, where so many have implied that Charlie Kirk deserved what he got.

Sometimes, when I see what people are saying, I instinctively think to myself about how Charlie Kirk is going to make mincemeat of them in his next reaction video. Then I remember that he’s gone. So I’m going to address a few of their arguments here.

Just after the assassination, The Federalist, Columbia’s satire paper, published an article titled, “Turning Point USA Undergoes Unexpected Ideological Shift, States Second Amendment Actually Not That Important Anymore.” The attitude, echoed by many students throughout our university, insinuates that Charlie Kirk somehow deserved to be assassinated due to his support for gun rights, and that the nature of his death makes him a hypocrite.

For a parallel method of reasoning, if a left-wing proponent of unrestricted immigration were killed by an unvetted illegal immigrant with a prior criminal record, the same students would never claim that their method of death would make the victim a hypocrite.

Furthermore, resorting to a debate about gun control enables leftists to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the ideology that motivated the shooter’s act of political violence. One of the shooter’s bullets had been engraved with the phrase “Hey, fascist, catch,” and the lyrics of Bella Ciao, an Italian song sung to celebrate resistance against Hitler and Mussolini. Although much remains unclear about the shooter, it is apparent that he viewed Republicans like Charlie Kirk as fascists, and that this belief was his moral justification for committing murder. The constant comparisons of the MAGA movement to Nazism and authoritarianism have been amplified by the media and across the left, including on our campus by faculty like Professor Robert O. Paxton and Professor Sam Freedman.

Even after Charlie Kirk’s death, Columbia professors and faculty have continued to describe President Trump and his supporters as fascist and authoritarian. Professor Jameel Jaffer posted on Bluesky that right-wing backlash against broadcasters that aired anti-Kirk comments was “authoritarian consolidation” and stated in an interview that “the president is claiming the powers of an authoritarian leader, and he’s doing it quite explicitly.” On the same platform, Professors Karl Jacoby and Joseph A. Howley separately reposted the same quote: “Maga is fundamentally a populist white racism. The slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is more accurately described as ‘Make White America Greater.’”

Perhaps most egregiously, Columbia Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer Hadeel Assali spoke out about Charlie Kirk, calling him a “dead Nazi” and condemning Columbia for lowering its flags in compliance with the federal order to honor Charlie Kirk. Assali is still employed at Columbia, teaching students about “anti-colonial approaches to doing science,” according to her course description.

Labeling your political opponents not just wrong, but fascist and evil, as both Assali and the shooter did to Charlie Kirk, is a permission structure for violence. This political polarization grows from echo chambers like Columbia in which ideas are not challenged or debated honestly.

If we really seek to ease tensions at Columbia and across our country, expressing conservative beliefs like Charlie Kirk died doing must no longer be an act of bravery. It has been one for many years, and it just became more so. Before, conservatives feared only mistreatment by liberal professors and ostracization by fellow students. Now, we know that we might also face violence.

In classes, I would encourage both professors and students to not only refrain from demonizing conservative viewpoints when a student has one, but also to make room for other opinions in lectures and reading assignments. Claims that misinformation caused Trump’s election, that tax cuts don’t work, or that merit-based admissions are racist are all opinions and should not be presented as facts. When they are, it reinforces Columbia’s echo chamber by implying that conservative thought is based on lies.

This year, CUCR is inviting several conservative speakers to campus. On Monday, October 13, mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa will be visiting us for a conversation about his campaign and New York City politics (I recently witnessed a few students ripping up a flyer promoting the event; needless to say, Sliwa is still coming). I extend a warm invitation to my peers and faculty to come to this event and the others we will host. Come continue the American tradition that meant so much to Charlie Kirk and is so vital to the well-being of our country. We might need more security following Kirk’s assassination, but we’re going to continue our mission of familiarizing students with Republican ideas and supporting conservatives at Columbia. Come engage with the marketplace of ideas and learn about beliefs that are too often missing from the discourse at Columbia. Only by accepting our disagreements and learning to live with each other will the polarized halves of our country have a real chance at unity.

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Ms. Weinfeld is a junior at Columbia College studying political science and creative writing. She is a staff writer for Sundial.

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The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.