The Death of Charlie Kirk Exposes a Crisis in Higher Education

The Tent That Should Have Been Unnecessary

One year ago, on September 10th, Charlie Kirk was killed during a campus debate at Utah Valley University. In that moment, he wasn't just a political activist or a conservative icon—he was a symbol of what higher education once stood for: a place where ideas could be freely exchanged, challenged, and refined.

I've thought about that scene countless times since then. What haunts me most isn't the violence itself, but the fact that Charlie had to bring his own stage, his own microphone, and his own security just to have an open debate. He didn't need those things because the university had failed to provide them.

Charlie and I sat down together at Southeastern University in 2022. No stage, no cameras, no audience. We talked about two things that turned out to be the same thing: how to fix American higher education, and where the next generation of leaders was going to come from.

He wanted to know whether institutions like mine were still forming leaders or had settled for processing students. That was always his real test of a school—and most were failing it long before a gunman showed up in Orem, Utah.

The Abandonment of Principle

We have created a culture on campuses where disagreement is treated as injury, and dissent becomes a threat. In the last two decades, we've built speech codes, bias reporting systems, and departments designed to shield students from ideas that unsettle them. We taught a generation that the right to speak is not absolute—but that when they are faced with ideas they disagree with, their first instinct is to silence or cancel.

Consider what students themselves say. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education surveyed 68,510 students at 257 colleges in the first half of 2025. Thirty-six percent said shouting down a campus speaker is sometimes or always acceptable. Fifteen percent said the same about using violence to stop a speech. That survey closed three months before Charlie was killed. I am not going to claim that a poll explains a murder—but it does describe a climate, and those who built that climate work in buildings like mine.

Where Are Our Principles?

When I reflect on the state of our universities, I see something deeper than policy failure: we've lost sight of what it means to educate a leader. We have traded intellectual rigor for political correctness, and now we're paying the price. Charlie Kirk did not die in a war zone—he died in an institution that was supposed to be the guardian of open discourse, not its destroyer.

The question is not whether universities should take a stand on free speech. It's whether they are willing to take one that matters. That means adopting real free expression policies—and defending them, even when it costs us donors or creates discomfort among alumni or parents.

What We Can Do

I believe the answer lies not in rhetoric but in action. As university leaders, we must stop disinviting speakers the moment a petition circulates. We must require students to argue positions they reject—and grade them on how well they do it. We must make it clear that universities are not places for safe spaces, but for the crucible of ideas.

At Southeastern University, we are unapologetically Christian. That is precisely why we are not afraid of the room. In the last year alone, we have hosted Karoline Leavitt, the former White House press secretary, and Pastor Lucas Miles, senior director of TPUSA Faith, the ministry arm of the organization Charlie built. Our students did not need to be shielded from any of them—they showed up, they asked hard questions, and they left sharper than they arrived.

We are not trying to graduate students who admire Charlie Kirk. We are trying to raise up a generation of them—young leaders who can walk into a hostile room, make the case on the merits, and change somebody's mind.

A Moral Imperative

Charlie Kirk's death was not just a tragedy—it was a reckoning. It forces us to ask whether we have truly honored our mission as educators. The American university was built to be a place of friction. The premise of a liberal arts education is that truth survives contact with its critics, and that a student learns to think only by defending what he believes in front of someone who does not share it.

If we are going to claim that universities exist to shape minds—and not just manage students—we must start acting like it. The room was ours. It is time we started using it for what it was built for: the honest confrontation of ideas, and the formation of leaders who will stand firm in truth, even when the world tells them otherwise.

Let's Make a Commitment

University presidents who want to honor Charlie Kirk this week have a more demanding option than a statement. We must commit to defending free expression the first time it costs us politically or financially. We must create environments where disagreement is not only permitted but expected—and where students are trained to engage with ideas, not just react to them.

Charlie did not die because he was wrong. He died because his very presence challenged a culture that has forgotten how to speak freely. The time for half-measures is over. The time to reclaim the university's soul is now.