Charlie Kirk spent his career doing something radical: He showed up on college campuses and talked to people.
Not screamed. Not rioted. Not threw things or pulled fire alarms. He stood at a table, took questions from students who disagreed with him — sometimes loudly, sometimes rudely — and engaged them like adults.
And some leftist shot him dead for it.
Now a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression tells us what that murder accomplished: Half of America’s college students are afraid to attend “controversial” events on campus. Nearly half are scared to voice opinions on “controversial” subjects in class.
Mission accomplished, I guess. If you’re a totalitarian.
The Survey
FIRE surveyed over 2,000 undergraduates nationwide, including an oversample from Utah Valley University where Kirk was killed.
The findings are exactly what you’d expect — and exactly what the killer probably wanted.
Students are self-censoring. They’re avoiding events. They’re keeping their heads down in class. The message landed: Speak up, and someone might hurt you.
Dr. Sean Stevens, FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor, put it plainly: Kirk’s assassination “has had a chilling effect — not just at UVU, but across the country.”
Let’s be clear about what “controversial” means in academic speak. It means conservative. A drag queen story hour isn’t controversial. A Marxist professor isn’t controversial. But a guy in a suit asking students to consider limited government? Controversial. Dangerous, even. Apparently dangerous enough to kill.
The Real Tell
Here’s the part that should make your blood boil.
After a conservative speaker was literally murdered on a college campus, moderate and conservative students became significantly less likely to support tactics like shouting down speakers, blocking events, or using violence to silence speech.
That makes sense. Normal people see political violence and recoil from it. They think, “This has gone too far.”
Liberal students? Their support for those tactics held steady or increased slightly.
Read that again. A man was shot to death for giving a speech, and liberal students are more comfortable with disruptive tactics than before.
This is the modern left. Violence against their enemies isn’t a problem to solve — it’s a tool to deploy. They’ve spent years calling speech “violence” so they could justify actual violence against speech. And now that it’s happened in the most literal way possible, they’re not reconsidering. They’re nodding along.
What Colleges Should Do
Here’s the solution, and it’s not complicated:
Any student who shouts down a speaker, blocks entry to an event, or disrupts campus speech gets expelled. Not suspended. Expelled. Gone. Pack your dorm.
Any faculty member or administrator who participates gets fired. Not reassigned. Not put on leave. Terminated. Escorted off campus. Good luck explaining that gap on your resume.
Anyone who commits physical violence or destroys property gets prosecuted. Not investigated by campus security. Prosecuted. Criminally. In court. With potential jail time.
This isn’t authoritarian. It’s the bare minimum for a functioning institution. You want to disagree with a speaker? Raise your hand. Ask a question. Write an op-ed. Organize a counter-event. That’s free speech.
What’s not free speech is screaming someone into silence. What’s not free speech is forming a human chain to block doors. And what’s definitely not free speech is shooting someone because you don’t like their politics.
What Kirk Understood
Charlie Kirk knew he wasn’t going to change every mind. He knew most of the students who showed up to challenge him would leave still disagreeing.
But he also knew something the left has forgotten: The conversation itself has value. The act of engaging with people you disagree with — civilly, openly, in good faith — is how a free society functions.
He didn’t run from hostile questions. He didn’t demand safe spaces. He walked onto campuses that hated him and said, “Let’s talk.”
And they killed him for it.
The Stakes
This isn’t about Charlie Kirk anymore. He’s gone. This is about what comes next.
If students are too scared to attend conservative events, conservatives stop hosting them. If speakers are too scared to accept invitations, they stop coming. If young people learn that certain opinions get you targeted, they stop having those opinions — or at least stop admitting to them.
That’s not education. That’s conditioning. That’s teaching an entire generation that the left gets a veto on acceptable thought, enforced by fear.
The killer wanted silence. He’s getting it.
And somewhere, the people who spent years calling Kirk a fascist and a Nazi and a danger to democracy are very quietly pleased with the outcome — even if they’d never admit it.
They wanted him gone. Now he’s gone. And the chill spreading across college campuses? That’s not a bug. That’s the feature.