I had to hold off until actually watching the video, which, ugh. I’m confident that was a setup by the student and their handlers (for example, whoever was filming) to get that teacher fired and make the school look bad. There was no “ignorance” involved there, one way or another. The student was not ignorant. The student was carrying out a very deliberate step in the Trump administration’s campaign of political repression against universities.

And if the student had been asking an ignorant question in good faith, the teacher handled it more or less correctly. It would have been nice to have a learning opportunity there, for example, the difference between executive orders and laws, or the difference between laws and science. But that would require a student who is willing to learn, and that wasn’t in the cards.

As for the rest, I am a deep believer in free speech on campuses, which has to include the right to ask ignorant questions, and express ignorant beliefs, including offensive and hateful beliefs, and have those beliefs debated and corrected, without being judged or punished for your ignorance.

I think a safe space for ignorance is a place where you can ask questions and express beliefs without being afraid people will judge or punish you if what you say is ignorant or offensive due to your ignorance. And I think those are these sorts of spaces you need to have in schools and on campuses if you want space for ignorant people to learn. If that’s not what you meant by the term, I apologize for misunderstanding you.

Alright. What did you mean by “ignorance should not have a safe space there”?

The American public has a very short attention span and this sort of thing tends to burn brightly for a while then blow out as soon as the next big story breaks.

There are millions of teenagers and 20-somethings who grew up listening to Charlie Kirk. For kids on the right, this is like if Joe Rogan or Mr Beast was killed.

I don’t think this is going away.

The purpose of a school is not to validate your pre-existing beliefs, but to give you a space to challenge your ideas and learn new ones.

That’s what Kirk did. Went to a school and challenged people’s ideas instead of validating their pre-existing beliefs.

And somebody killed him for it.

Kirk’s ideas were wrong. Bad for the people who believe them and bad for America.

Colleges should be places where you learn to confront and argue against bad ideas - places where you learn the critical thinking skills people need in a world full of lies, misinformation, and political propaganda like Charlie Kirk’s.

But you can’t learn critical thinking skills if you don’t have bad ideas to think critically about.

And you can’t question your own beliefs if you’re afraid to talk openly about what you believe.

You say “Ignorance should not have a safe space there” - but that’s exactly wrong. In a school, it should be safe to admit your ignorance. Students need the right to be wrong. Because it’s only by admitting to, and arguing for, their wrong beliefs, that they can learn why their beliefs are wrong.

If I feel safe to admit my (shitty, wrong) beliefs and argue for them, then other people feel safe to argue with me, and then, hopefully, I can learn why my beliefs are shitty and wrong and change them.

If I’m afraid to talk about my beliefs because I’ll be ostracized or punished or expelled, then I’m much less likely to learn my beliefs are wrong. Instead, like so many of the young conservatives that Kirk appealed to, I’m going to believe I’m right and that liberals are using their power and authority to silence me.

This is why colleges are historically free speech zones. It’s why we have the goddamn First Amendment in the first place.

Censoring ideas just makes them stronger.

And somebody just applied the ultimate form of censorship to one of the most popular conservatives in America.

Yeah. And ironically, part of the issue is a lack of empathy on the left. Instead of asking why conservatives believe these things and trying to understand how to convince them otherwise, the American left just wants to call them fascists and deplatform them. “It’s not my job to educate you” is smug and contemptuous and one of the nicer ways the left respond to conservatives.

The reason Charlie Kirk is so beloved on the right is because when the feminist movement wrote young men off - telling them “everything you know about being a man is misogynist, stop doing it, but it’s not our job to teach you how to be a better man” and leaving millions of young men at a loss about how to be men, Kirk came along and told them it was okay to be a traditional man and here’s how to do it.

Kirk was an idol to millions of teenage boys who are now seeing the online left cheering for his death. And if you think Trump is bad, just wait until those kids are old enough to vote.

To your point 6: I think a lot of you on the left are deeply, deeply underestimating how influential Charlie Kirk is, or was, among young conservatives and young people in general.

I mean, Kirk was on Gavin Newsom’s podcast in March and Newsom talked about how his kids loved Kirk. How his 13-year-old son refused to go to school because he wanted to stay home and meet Charlie. And if that doesn’t tell you how wide Kirk’s appeal is among young people I don’t know what would.

And look. A lot of people on the left also discount or ignore how young conservatives feel discriminated against in higher education. Rightly or wrongly, I’m talking about their beliefs, not the validity of those beliefs. Kids who come from red states with conservative Christian beliefs about sex, about gender, about what it means to be a man, they’re proud to go to college so they can earn a better living and do better for their future children than their parents did for them. And then they hit the culture shock of college and both students and teachers are telling them “everything you believe is wrong, you’re a bad person for believing it, and if you even try to argue for it we will ostracize you”.

It’s not just the homeschool kids from Prager U, either. There has been a hell of a chilling effect on campuses for a long time now, when it comes to any belief that somebody might call racist or sexist or bigoted. And I think that just reinforces those racist, sexist, and bigoted beliefs - because people are afraid to have the debates and learning experiences that might convince them they’re wrong, because they’re afraid to admit to having those beliefs in the first place, so they just keep their heads down, feel oppressed, and don’t learn anything new.

And Kirk tells those young men “you are oppressed, it’s not right, and I’m going to go to your campus and speak for you when you can’t safely speak for yourself.”

And then he does it.

And then some piece of shit shoots him.

Some young conservatives consider Kirk not just a political activist but a civil rights leader.

And he may well have just died for his beliefs.

In other words: the reaction to this could be very, very bad.