I am the Turning Point USA faculty adviser at Arizona State University. As a philosophy professor, what Charlie Kirk was doing stood out to me immediately. It also stood out to the ideologue professors who didn’t like being questioned. That’s why they tried to stop him.

Charlie did something no one thought possible. He walked into the heart of the modern university — where the left claims to hold the keys to knowledge — and did what their professors should have been doing all along: He asked questions. He challenged assumptions. He demanded clarity. He gave logical arguments.

Charlie wasn’t there to score points or win applause. He cared about students’ souls.

He was the American Socrates.

Modeling the Socratic dialogue

Like the Athenian philosopher, Charlie confronted those who claimed to be wise. He took questions — hundreds of them — on camera for all to see. Students asked about gender, economics, faith, and politics. He asked if they could rationally defend their views.

Again and again, Charlie turned the tables, and we saw that the content of the leftist classroom is irrational.

On gender ideology, he exposed what I call the “transsexual heresy,” showing students that reality — not ideology — defines what it means to be a man or a woman. He warned against letting confusion dictate truth. Objective reality matters, and he ensured that students knew it. The mentally ill should not be able to dictate to the rest of us what reality is. And anyone who doesn’t know basic things, such as the difference between a man and a woman, isn’t ready to teach students.

On economics, he dismantled Marxist clichés students had absorbed from their professors, showing that personal responsibility — not socialism — is the bedrock of human flourishing. They came at him with Rousseau, stating that private property and “the system” force the “oppressed” to live lives of crime. In one video, a student told him the poor and marginalized have to become criminals, and Charlie demolished this by simply asking if they have free will. It was brilliant, and everyone watching knew it.

On Christianity, he confronted the narrative that faith is merely patriarchy and white supremacy in disguise. The background narrative is that these professors hate the Bible. Professors had planted these lies in the minds of students to prevent them from reading it.

An untold multitude of students had their faith shipwrecked by such professors while their parents paid the tuition. The unbelieving profs thought they had sufficiently salted the ground and planted tares in the field. Charlie tore them out, root and branch, preparing the ground for the gospel itself to be heard.

The professors’ ire

And that’s why the professors despised him.

I’ve been in those faculty meetings. I’ve heard professors laugh about “deconstructing” the faith of Christian students. I’ve watched them assign books praising witchcraft while condemning Christianity as “oppressive.” I’ve seen them try to ban Charlie Kirk from speaking on campus by declaring him a “white supremacist.”

ASU “honors faculty” successfully prevented him from speaking at the honor college even while they held events on the benefits of witchcraft — while the outlet Jezebel bragged about hiring “Etsy witches” to hex him. If the witches hated him this much, it tells the good guys he was on to something.

The spiritual battle lines could not be clearer.

Charlie wasn’t there to score points or win applause. He cared about students’ souls. He stood in the breach against professors who see students not as young men and women searching for truth, but as recruits for their ideological crusades. He laughed at the degree programs that promised jobs for students such as “radical advocate.” He was there because he believed those students were worth saving from the godless ideologies peddled in classrooms.

Blatant hypocrisy

When Charlie was murdered, some on the left rushed to say, “Let’s all calm down.” There is no moral equivalency here between the right and the left. Yet the left is the one who heated it up by calling him a white supremacist. The left controls the American university, where conservatives and Christians are called “fascist white supremacist patriarchs worse than Hitler” all day and night.

Where was that call for calm after George Floyd’s fentanyl overdose? Violence erupted. Cities burned. Professors excused it all. They used class time to tout Black Lives Matter.

But you won’t see TPUSA students burning cities BLM-style. They will do what Charlie taught them: Use logic and reason to expose falsehoods. Like the students of Athens after Socrates’ death, they will remember the example of the man who confronted their professors — and won.

And those professors will live knowing they were weighed in the balance and found wanting. They are the baddies.

Socrates’ prediction still stands

Before his execution, Socrates told his accusers they would face a heavier judgment than the one they inflicted on him. They killed him to silence him. But his death only proved their ignorance and wickedness. They were unable to give an account to explain themselves and were exposed as living the unexamined life.

The same is true here.

Charlie’s death will not silence him. It will amplify his example. Students will keep questioning. They will expose the foolishness of professors who despised Charlie’s example. And those radical professors will carry the shame of knowing they tried to cover ignorance with hatred.

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Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

As a Christian pastor, I know Charlie saw that souls were at stake. Charlie publicly professed Christ to be his savior, and the ideological professors know it also. They saw students giving their souls in faith to Christ rather than John Money and hated it.

Now those professors think Charlie is silenced, but they must live with their own darkness. They can repent — or they will live in that darkness forever and face the judgment of God. The blood of martyrs has always been the seed of revival.

May the Lord use Charlie’s life — and yes, even his death — to raise up a generation of students who love truth, pursue wisdom, and refuse to bow to the false gods of the modern university. Let’s question godless professors to reveal to everyone watching that they don’t know clear truths about God and what is good.

Charlie Kirk was the American Socrates. The leftist professors hated him for it. And they will never escape the questions he taught a generation to ask.