A liberal professor at Georgia College & State University celebrated his role as faculty advisor for his school’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapter in a New York Times guest essay on Friday.

Nicholas Creel, an associate professor of business law who described himself as a liberal and critic of President Donald Trump, wrote that serving as advisor to the conservative group founded by Charlie Kirk while holding left-leaning views is not a contradiction. 

"Being a liberal professor who advises a branch of Mr. Kirk’s organization isn’t a contradiction; it’s proof that exchanging ideas with both conviction and civility remains possible when we’re willing to model it," Creel wrote.

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Creel said he never expected to join the group but agreed after a student asked him to help start the chapter when other faculty declined. 

"However, my dedication to the principles of free speech put me in a position where I felt that I couldn’t refuse a student’s request to help. He said that other faculty members had already turned him down. My understanding is that one conservative faculty member declined because he was concerned that saying yes might rankle his liberal colleagues."

Creel wrote that he told one of the students founding the local chapter that he "wasn’t signing on as an ideological ally," but that he was helping so that the "new TPUSA chapter had access to the same resources as any other student group, and to serve as an advocate if the group’s members ever felt singled out for their beliefs."

Despite their ideological differences, Creel remarked that the student — who became the TPUSA chapter’s president — "was nothing less than a politically engaged young man who was sincerely interested in constructive dialogue" and reminded him of himself when he was in college.

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The educator stated that after the student stepped down from his leadership role and the chapter began to thrive, he expected not to be as involved. However, he said that changed after the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10.

"But when Mr. Kirk was killed, I knew the students in our TPUSA chapter would be devastated. I reached out to one of the current presidents — whom I’d never met before — to offer support in whatever way I could," he wrote.

Creel stated that he helped the chapter arrange security for their planned Kirk vigil, noting, "I didn’t expect any trouble, but I wanted these grieving students to feel as safe as possible as they mourned."

He wrote how his support opened a dialogue between him and one of the current chapter presidents that he said stunned him.

He recounted how after he spoke to her about how the vigil went, "she made a casual comment that stopped me in my tracks: She said she always enjoyed reading my opinion articles."

"Here was a conservative student leader telling a liberal professor that she not only sought out his opposing viewpoints, she also took something from them," Creel said.

"In that moment, I saw what’s possible when we choose genuine intellectual engagement. She wasn’t retreating into an echo chamber or dismissing liberal arguments out of hand — she was grappling with ideas that challenged her own, embodying the spirit of inquiry that universities like mine pride themselves on fostering."

The professor wrote that he came away from the experience seeing that, after a week of political turmoil and hardening divisions following Kirk’s murder, that TPUSA students are the ones "showing that the messy work of democracy can be practiced, not just preached."

"If they can bridge these divides, the rest of us have no excuse for retreating into our respective corners," he said.