On 16 September, the New College of Florida announced plans to commission a statue of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and organiser who was fatally shot on 10 September while speaking at Utah Valley University in the city of Orem.
A press release shared by a New College spokesperson states that the monument will “honour his legacy and incredible work after his tragic assassination earlier this month. The statue, privately funded by community leaders, will stand on campus as a commitment by New College to defend and fight for free speech and civil discourse in American life. The location for the statue will be announced in the coming months.”
New College is a public liberal-arts school in Sarasota, Florida. It is one of many colleges and universities that, since 2022, have been feeling the weight of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “war on woke”—a politically conservative plan to reform the state’s public-education system that many see as an assault on academic freedom.
Kirk, a co-founder of the influential conservative organisation Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was a passionate advocate for right-wing ideas and had a close relationship with President Donald Trump. Kirk’s supporters are calling him a “free-speech martyr”, vowing to use their own right to free speech to advance his ideals. But critics point out that the political views Kirk promoted to crowds of young students were transphobic, antisemitic, racist and misogynistic; he was also known to deny climate change and advocate for gun rights.
Since Kirk’s death, there has been a move to silence his critics; people nationwide are being reprimanded and fired from their jobs for online comments criticising Kirk.
In Florida, a letter sent on 15 September to the board of governors of the state’s universities noted: “While the right to free expression is paramount, it is not absolute. Celebrating and excusing campus violence—and in this case, the murder of Charlie Kirk—by members of our university system will not be tolerated.” The letter further urges university presidents to “review policies, procedures and codes of conduct for employees and students regarding social-media postings and other related communications”. (At Florida Atlantic University, an art history professor was put on leave after she re-posted others’ comments about Kirk’s past statements.)
The New College of Florida, the only public liberal-arts college in the state, was one of the first institutions attacked by DeSantis’s education laws. In January 2023, the governor appointed six conservative members to the college’s board of trustees, and that board fired the college’s president and installed a Republican politician in her place. By July of the same year, more than a third of the faculty had left, and many students transferred to other schools. Some professors and students have lawsuits pending against the university.
Statues of Kirk have also been proposed in Texas, as well as for the US Capitol in Washington, DC. The Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, whom Kirk recruited as national Hispanic outreach director for TPUSA in 2018, is lobbying for the statue of Kirk at the Capitol, according to a letter she sent earlier this month. In the letter, she blamed “hateful rhetoric from the left” for creating “a toxic environment where one side finds it acceptable to stoke fear and violence to silence civil dissent”.
