COMMENTARY

Students in Memory of Charlie Kirk: A Joint Statement

Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk signs hats during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center on December 20, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. The annual four day conference geared toward energizing and connecting conservative youth hosts some of the country’s leading conservative politicians and activists.

Rebecca Noble / Getty Images / AFP

"Charlie Kirk was not killed because he was ‘radical’; he was killed because he was effective."

On September 10th, the whole world watched in horror as Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was killed with a single bullet to the neck during a debate on the Utah Valley University campus. As reactions and condemnations were quick to come, some started painting this assassination as an ‘accident,’ something that could have happened to anyone else in politics. But the death of Charlie Kirk is not the act of a ‘lone wolf’ or of a ‘deranged individual’—it is the result of an entire system designed to smear, harass, and attack people who dare think differently from the radical Left. It is designed to make conservatives live in fear and leave the political scene to far-left activists so that they can act unopposed.

The pinnacle of this apparatus has always been universities, where radical teachers and students have taken power and imposed this system designed to keep students in ignorance. Our high schools and colleges have become indoctrination centers, telling us what to think rather than how to think. Those that stray from the path, be they left-wing or right-wing, will immediately be persecuted and branded ‘fascists,’ ‘Nazis,’ ‘traitors,’ and other terms that invite violence.

Charlie Kirk understood the pressure that this system created on conservative students, which is why he founded Turning Point USA and conducted those campus tours. He aimed to encourage conservative students to speak up, share their ideas, and stand up for themselves.

He was not killed because he was ‘radical’; he was killed because he was effective. By pushing for debate and freedom of speech, he slowly dismantled the left-wing grip on universities and opened the eyes of the youth across the U.S., showing them that conservatives were not the devil that others tried to paint us as. By doing this despite knowing the risk of violence, Charlie Kirk showed us the way and inspired us with his courage and relentless action.

This system is not exclusive to the U.S.; in fact, it comes from Europe. Just last year in France, on November 19th, 2024, two conservative students were stabbed while participating in student elections at Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Of the two attackers arrested, one was in possession of a metal chain he used to attack the students. On March 14th, 2025, one member of La Cocarde étudiante got attacked at his home after being followed after leafleting at Albi’s university. On March 28th, 2025, at Saint-Denis’s university, a left-wing activist tried to pull a gun on conservative students who were leafleting. He was shielded from the police by the university president after fleeing the scene. And these were only examples from last year.

In Italy, intolerance is also growing day by day. On March 21st, 2025, in Pavia, one of the candidates for the national university elections was brutally attacked and ended up in the hospital, requiring two weeks of recovery. On October 25th, 2022, at La Sapienza University in Rome, a conference with journalist Daniele Capezzone and MP Fabio Roscani was violently disrupted by left-wing collectives, forcing the police to intervene, with resulting scuffles, injuries, and students escorted in and out of the campus. On November 20th, 2024, again at La Sapienza, during student elections, leftist groups threw bottles and objects at students, injuring even a security officer, while the police had to form a cordon to protect them. And just the other day, on September 16th, 2025, in Pisa, a university professor was physically assaulted inside a classroom by radical activists who stormed his lecture, shouting slogans and even throwing punches. These episodes show that what happened to Charlie Kirk in the United States is part of a wider system of violence and intimidation that crosses borders and seeks to silence conservative voices everywhere.

Conservative speakers across Europe have been banned, harassed, and even attacked while trying to speak at universities. Each conservative student organization knows the pain and difficulty it is to invite speakers on campuses, as the university cancels the talks, the left wing mobilizes to protest and disturb, and speakers drop out of fear for their safety.

We proclaim that the best way to honor Charlie Kirk’s memory is to continue to promote conservative ideas, to make sure that no conservative student feels the need to hide his ideas out of fear, so that each campus across Europe and the U.S. can have a free exchange of ideas and form students capable of critical thinking. So that from this assassination, hundreds of thousands of future Charlie Kirks emerge and make sure his legacy becomes eternal. So that campuses across Europe and America become beacons of reason and truth.

If you would like to join the petition signatories, please send a message to edouard.bina@cocardeetudiante.com, mentioning your organization and/or your university.