In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination one year ago, we must not retreat from speaking up on controversial topics.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination one year ago, we must not retreat from speaking up on controversial topics.
A recent poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) revealed that conservative students now side with liberal students on keeping controversial speech off campus. This comes just before the one-year anniversary of the assassination of my dear friend, Charlie Kirk, for exercising his free-speech rights on a college campus. As someone who has spent her life in “prove me wrong” exchanges as Charlie did, I understand the value and the risks of public debate, but rejecting free speech in public places isn’t the lesson to be learned from my friend’s murder.
Today, free speech isn’t “free.” From bomb-sniffing dogs to extra security, an average student event on campus can cost around $4,000, but Students for Life and our supporters have been willing to pay the price. We lose too much if we walk away from civil discourse in institutions where the left already has a monopoly on messaging.
If our trauma leaves us silent, only one side will be heard. Studies show that left-leaning faculty wildly outnumber right-leaning faculty on college campuses — as many as 82 left-leaning professors for every one conservative professor. With discrepancies this dramatic, it is no wonder that one-third of college students report that they are uncomfortable voicing their political views on campus — unless they are Democrats, who report being more politically engaged at their universities.
Students for Life can’t even get Democrats in Congress to support just telling students about the resources available to them if they are pregnant and parenting, through SFLAction’s “Pregnant Students’ Rights Act,” much less to admit the horrors of abortion and Planned Parenthood. This legislation solely requires universities to provide information to students on their rights and protections, as well as campus and community resources, should they be pregnant and choose life. This should already be a standard on campus. Instead, colleges stay silent or even welcome Planned Parenthood to push students toward abortion.
Still, every generation must fight for its right to be heard. Our nation’s founders understood the need for free speech because they and their friends saw people they cared about pay the ultimate price for speaking up against tyranny. Some even paid it themselves. Powerful words demanded powerful sacrifices.
Today, we need free speech and the courage to use it, especially on the issue of abortion — the human rights issue of our day, where the innocent die before getting to utter their first word. But I am concerned that this generation of students is considering self-censorship even as others embrace violence. Over 9 in 10 students said they self-censor on campus, while a third of students embrace violence as a way to confront a speaker they don’t agree with or want to hear.
That represents another failure of many colleges and universities today — the failure to teach students to respectfully engage with the ideas and views of other people, the failure to protect speakers on campuses, and the lax response or open celebration of prejudice against conservative and faith-motivated thinking. No wonder many parents think a four-year degree for their children isn’t worth the money.
Charlie Kirk went to college campuses because he believed, as I do, that we need to reach each generation with the truth about how to achieve hope and a future. The boldness of stepping on college campuses for an open debate changes minds.
For a spin on a quote routinely credited to Edmund Burke, all it takes for evil to advance is for good people to stay silent. Charlie, we won’t give up.