The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
Members of the far-left have spent years talking down to the American people from a position of self-styled moral superiority. They have scolded that it is racist to support the police, transphobic to seek to keep biological men out of women’s sports, and emboldening of Nazis to dare to support President Trump.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus, allegedly carried out by someone who proclaimed that “some hate can’t be negotiated out” and whom Utah Governor Spencer Cox described as consumed by “leftist ideology,” is but the latest in a series of acts of deranged lunacy — following the pair of attempts on the life of President Trump leading up to the 2024 election — targeting those whose ideas are deemed lesser than, whose followers are looked down upon, and whose personhoods are denigrated as devoid of meaning. Rhetoric reducing political opponents to “Nazis” excuses people from ever having to engage with the other side. And when the core values of honest dissent and earnest dialogue slip out of the political arena, it’s all too easy for violence to fill the void.
Charlie Kirk recognized all of these things. He understood the perverse effects of ideological conformity on college campuses. And so he visited those campuses. He modeled respectful debate in the public square in a way that so few have been willing to do in recent years, probing his challengers’ assumptions and demonstrating a willingness to speak on any topic of public import. He sought to change minds through persuasion — not bullying, condescension, or violence. From these virtues, Princetonians have something to learn.
Too often, however, Princeton students have turned up their noses at the prospect of dialogue with those they deem to be members of the “class of oppression.” When interviewed as a pro-Israel leader back in December, I told the ‘Prince’ regarding siloization surrounding the conflict in the Middle East on campus: “End it. I am ready to talk and am waiting for anyone who is pro-Palestinian to take my offer.” A student supporter of the Palestinian cause responded, saying: “You don’t go around asking oppressed people why they don’t have conversations with their oppressors.”
That same refusal to recognize ideological opponents as worthy of dialogue has metastasized into something far darker: a willingness to cheer violence itself. Just as many on Princeton’s campus excused or even celebrated Luigi Mangione — who has been charged with the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson — so too did a collection of my peers respond to Charlie Kirk’s death with mockery.
On the anonymous campus social media platform Fizz, one student shared an article about Kirk’s support for the Second Amendment and cracked, “He really shot himself in the foot there. Or maybe in the neck, in this instance.”
Another said, “You felt no sympathy for kids being killed by gun violence and want me to pray for you? Yeah no thanks.”
One opined, “If you can’t bring yourself to feel sorry for Charlie Kirk in light of what happened today, don’t feel too bad. Because you know who else wouldn’t feel that bad for Charlie Kirk? Charlie Kirk.”
That any number of Princeton students — supposedly among our nation’s most talented — are expressing these beliefs is reflective of an unacceptable slide towards moral depravity.
Personally, there is no invited guest whose attack or death would not warrant my prayer. There is no speaker or speech whose words are so objectionable as to warrant physical attack. And, as was the case for Charlie Kirk, there are few ideas so intolerable as to repel my desire for dialogue.
If conversation is off-limits, then what remains is contempt — which, as we saw with Kirk, too quickly devolves into support for violence. This issue transcends the halls of Princeton. A YouGov poll last week reported that 26 percent of liberals aged 18–44 believe that political violence can sometimes be justified. Twenty-four percent of those who identify as “very liberal” among all age groups find that it is “always or usually acceptable” to “be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose.”
Where do we go from here? Where do we go when to be a conservative speaker on a college campus is to put oneself at risk of a bullet? Where do we go when to be a healthcare CEO is to be considered unworthy of life itself?
How do we inspire a new generation of Princetonians and Americans to step up and share their ideas when to do so is to put their physical safety at risk? How do we convince young people that the honorable way to engage in discourse is to make the argument, build the movement, and contend with diverse sets of ideas when to do so is to put a target on their backs? How can we feel confident in the future of our republic when students at our top universities cannot bring themselves to pray for the innocent victims of violence, even when those victims have differing political opinions?
The tragedy of Charlie Kirk’s assassination is the loss of a model of courage when our country needs courage most. In a nation where the price of speaking freely becomes death, freedom itself is imperiled. When the response to slaughter is mockery, it is apparent that too many on the left have today lost sight of the basic truth that violence is never the answer.
The measure of a free nation is not how it treats those who agree with the majority, but how it protects those who dissent. If we cannot relearn that lesson, if we cannot demand of our universities, our leaders, and ourselves a return to decency and morality, then Charlie Kirk’s death will have been — in part — in vain.
Kirk’s killing will mark a turning point. The question is whether it leads America and those who diverge from the prevailing orthodoxy on its college campuses into fear and silence, or towards courage and conviction. We best honor the ideals for which Charlie Kirk stood not with silence, but by speaking, building, advocating, and leading with the same resolve he carried until his dying breath.
Maximillian Meyer ’27 is the president of Tigers for Israel. He may be reached at mm1346[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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