Everyone is speculating about what drove a young man to assassinate Charlie Kirk. But for academics like us, the more pressing lesson lies not in the mind of the killer, but in the conditions that elevated Kirk to such notoriety.
Kirk’s voice echoed against the awkward silence of scholars who are afraid to speak out against ideas they know are wrong. On many campuses today, a dominant cohort of faculty and administrators openly promote progressive and liberal positions in policy, curriculum, and student life, while those with traditional or conservative views hold their tongues, fearing social backlash or professional reprisals. Among students, the same imbalance prevails: liberal voices are amplified while conservative and nonconforming perspectives struggle to be heard.
Such reticence from the dissenting few amplified the shock felt by the majority of students each time Kirk appeared on campuses to openly challenge what he saw as comfortable orthodoxy. Liberals and progressives were not prepared to receive any pushback to their assumptions about equity versus equality, Critical Race Theory, gender identity, cosmopolitanism, or the expansion of state power into private life.
The problem is not that such ideas necessarily lack merit, but that universities have created an atmosphere of groupthink. In this climate, advocates of dominant positions need not rigorously defend their views, because genuine debate is rare—and even discouraged, as it is seen as a threat to social cohesion. A rigorous defense would demand both the willingness of colleagues and students to scrutinize these ideas and an openness to exploring possible deficiencies. But this work cannot occur if certain positions have been elevated to the level of institutional dogma, where a commitment to them—sometimes formally, more often informally—functions as a prerequisite for full membership in the academic community.
Who bears the responsibility for challenging institutional dogma?
It is unrealistic to expect an open invitation from those who promote and defend it; they have no obligation to encourage the rise of opposing views. That responsibility falls to those of us who have allowed prevailing orthodoxies to go unchallenged. By remaining silent, dissenting academics unwittingly made Charlie Kirk more vulnerable—an isolated voice standing against an entrenched consensus, and therefore easier to target.
It is time for those of us who see the dangers of intellectual conformity to speak up and help restore a culture of genuine debate.
There are understandable reasons why some academics became silent during the culture war of the 1990s, which then morphed into the “cancel culture” of the new millennium. In 2014, a large study called Professors and Their Politics by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons showed that while American universities are not overtly always hostile to non-liberal views, they can nonetheless be at least an uncomfortable environment for them.
The predominance of liberal viewpoints among faculty means that those who don’t share them are often in the minority, which can create feelings of isolation or unease, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The study highlights how disciplinary cultures, hiring patterns, and professional conversations subtly reinforce progressive assumptions, making it harder for others to feel fully at home in academic life, even if outright exclusion is rare. More recent studies show that self-censorship is a major, underestimated feature of academic life.
Across several papers, Cory Clark and her colleagues pressed this point with hard data: scientists and scholars often suppress findings or avoid research topics to protect colleagues, vulnerable groups, and the perceived social good, as well as personal costs. In surveys of U.S. psychology professors, those who held controversial views were also more likely to self-censor, a dynamic that can skew the perceived consensus. Furthermore, Clark’s research shows that support for campus censorship increases when information is perceived as threatening to group equality.
Taken together, these findings suggest what we all seem to know intuitively: academia can be an inhospitable environment for dissenters—particularly for those who hold conservative or nonconforming views.
Observing these events from Europe, we recognize both parallels and contrasts with our own situation. As Vice President JD Vance noted in his remarks at the Munich Security Conference, restrictions on speech are pervasive and growing in European countries. However, the mechanisms of this retreat differ from those in the United States.
On this side of the Atlantic, constraints on free expression are more often enforced through government legislation and bureaucratic oversight. In France, for instance, the Conseil national des universités—the body responsible for faculty accreditation—can act as a gatekeeper for ideological conformity. State secularism (laïcité) also imposes strict limitations on religious expression within public universities. In the United Kingdom, the Prevent Duty obliges universities to “have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.” This mandate includes monitoring and reporting speech that may be perceived as radicalizing or extremist—even when no laws have been broken.
Together, these frameworks impose legal and institutional constraints that make it more difficult for academics to speak as freely as many of their American counterparts. But legal limits do not absolve us of our moral responsibility. We still have a duty to speak in defense of truth and to foster open inquiry—especially when such inquiry is difficult or unpopular.
On both sides of the Atlantic, there is an urgent need for renewed dialogue on how to better voice dissent and foster genuine debate within academia, especially on deeply contested issues like abortion, gun rights, gender identity, immigration, and religion. The views expressed by figures like Charlie Kirk—many of which draw on respected scholars such as Thomas Sowell or reflect long-standing Western religious traditions—should not be seen as so extreme that they render him a uniquely controversial figure. If they are seen in this light, it is less a reflection of his radicalism than our own silence.