A Letter to My Students Occasioned by Charlie Kirk’s Murder
We must choose hope over despair.
Below is the letter I sent my students upon learning that Charlie Kirk had been murdered. Kirk was a deeply controversial figure—one with whom I often strongly disagreed—and I realize some of my students (or perhaps some of you reading this now) may find aspects of my note disagreeable or even offensive. I hope that will not be the case. The letter was written from the heart, though I recognize that sometimes words written in the moment of passion are better left unexpressed until time allows for a sense of proportionality to regain its hold on our thinking. Still, I chose to write to my students almost immediately upon hearing the news, and I share it here only a few hours later.
We live in an age of outrage, where reactions are swift and spawn countless cycles of counter-outrage. None of us can know how our broader culture will respond. Yet I offer my letter in the spirit of a plea for our better angels to reclaim their rightful place in our public life and our self-governance. Thank you for your indulgence.
“Beloved students
Many of you have likely heard the terrible news that Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative voice and advocate for younger conservatives, was assassinated this afternoon.
In response to this nightmarish act of violence, I want to share with you what I wrote earlier today on social media:
- “I’m praying for Charlie Kirk’s recovery from this horrific act of senseless and evil violence. Praying for peace. Praying for cool heads to prevail.”
- “Update: Sources are reporting that Kirk has died. We live in a sad and sick world teeming with so many hateful and angry and unhinged persons. I simply abhor this act of violence, and I am literally sick to my stomach. While we pray for Kirk’s family, we cannot despair–we simply cannot afford to despair. We must continue to pray for peace and to strive to make our world a gentler and more loving home for all. I pray for cool heads to prevail..”
Whether you admired Charlie Kirk’s views or strongly disagreed with them, I hope you join me in recognizing that what happened was a dreadful and morally senseless act—one that has forever taken him from his wife and children.
I also want to acknowledge the many feelings this shocking act of violence may stir in you: grief, anger, fear, or anxiety about what comes next. If it would help to talk, please know my door is open for you—whether to visit me in my office or to chat outside in the sun—and, if you wish, my door is open for your friends to join you as well. There is no pressure; it is simply an open invitation to share and unburden.
As a class, I have every confidence we will continue to honor a spirit of respectful dialogue. Politics is hard to talk about, but our shared humanity must prevail over our political differences, and I commend you for the generosity of spirit you have already consistently brought to our conversations. It makes all the difference.
I reach out in lamentation for the state of our politics and for the selfish acts of selfish people, but I also want to offer you some hope: together we can act with courage, compassion, and conviction to make tomorrow better than today. We must choose hope over despair.
Above all, I write because I feel such deep sadness for our country, and I want to extend to you a gesture of solidarity and kinship as fellow human beings.
Peace,
Michael Bailey”
Thank you for sharing this.
It’s too late for a battle between hope and despair, and maybe that’s good. Some other battle, a real one, has to take place in the American soul. People have to take responsibility for their actions and not settle for fantasies. Whoever murdered Kirk murdered a human being no different than any of us. Violence has no place anywhere. The human body is not meant to be die like that: it’s clear if you have ever seen one death by violence, political or not.
America lives on violence. It always has. The great American fear is that one day I will get what’s coming to me. That’s why white people were terrified of black violence and that’s why long after King was assassinated they repurposed non-violence and turned it into a get-out-jail-free card, not because they thought non-violence was a good in and of itself but because they were free to continue to use violence. I just had a conversation with someone who is angry about how Kirk’s death is being justified online. This from a person who has justified tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths with nothing but contempt for the dead. All I can think is that she, deep down, believes she deserves the same bullet and is terrified of that. But do I deserve the same bullet? Absolutely. We are all implicated and we all deserve to be shot. That’s the message of hope.
Hope v despair is a false dichotomy, and a call to embrace the first is a refusal to confront the reality of what is happening in America.
The Trump regime regards coercion and force as the principal tools at its disposal to achieve its totalitarian objectives. The more it uses them, the more its victims will retaliate in kind. Anyone in a position of power or influence in business, politics, education, the media, law enforcement etc is going to have to decide, sooner or later, which side they are on in a conflict that is only going to get worse and worse.
For all of the intolerance that Charlie Kirk projected into our society with his life work focused on influencing young adults, we still should step back from this event and remind ourselves that this man leaves a wife, two daughters, extended family, and friends, whose grief over his loss is disconnected from however we might view his chosen activism.
But the act of his killing is far from disconnected from our own culture that both promulgates violence and desensitizes us at the same time. Our entertainment is awash with themes of personal victimhood and retribution, with all the exacting graphic detail technology can provide, and at an event frequency that would be unfathomable 60 years ago. Our politics seems to take a cue from our pop culture offerings. We all support this economy of violence one way or another, directly as consumers of the circus or as consumers of those products that underwrite the circus.
Just hours after Kirk’s death was announced, FOX’s Jesse Watters was calling this an act of war.
What has been Watter’s public response to the unending stream of mass school shootings, or the LGBTQ club mass killings, or any of the violence acts against those of opposing ideology? Was he provoked enough to “go to the mat” against those senseless killings?
Watters has a big platform with which to inject even more animus into our shared public space. People are listening, watching. Most people people will process what has happened with matured restraint, horror, and grief. But some will not. We are a big population. We keep feeding this monster we call home.
This is a great letter. I hope we all listen to its message.
But our media punditry keeps pushing despair and outrage.
The up close videos of the murder are extremely graphic. Looked like his carotid artery took a direct hit and he was dead before he finished crumpling. So take that as a warning if any of you get curious about the video.
It’s probably going to take a few weeks to find the murderer. It’ll take investigators a while to sift through the mountain of video as they trace both the arrival and departure of the killer.
Political violence is unacceptable.. I would certainly wish shame and ruin on Charlie Kirk but not death.
And of course sympathy for his young family.
Notable though that soon before his murder Kirk was cheerfully engaged in race baiting about the murder on the train in Charlotte. And the fact that flags were ordered at half mast by a Federal order for someone who was nothing more than a very successful right wing influencer (compared to when, for example, the Minnesota lawmakers were killed) shows how the right has no issues with clearly showing that it’s not people being killed that’s the problem – it’s only a problem when certain people are killed.
Love the letter, it will be helpful to students. While I disagree with Kirk on so much and find his debate style practical but not reasonable, it was not the inflammatory rhetoric that we get from a Rush Limbal or Glen Beck. Maybe some people find his style more dangerous and deceitful since it is so subtle. But, this country needs more subtle debate from both sides. His assassination only empowers those who want to crush all speech.
It was just another typical day in America. Nothing particularly different from any other day, other than the target yesterday was a social media influencer who advocated for the situation that ultimately killed him.
Perhaps, one day, there will be fewer people like Kirk advocating for continued gun violence and hatred of others in America.
I mourn for the people who will die in mass shootings today and next week and next month, and those who love them.
But make no mistake. This is what America is. We have chosen this.
@HelloWorld:
Bullshit.
“Black women do not have [the] brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot”
“Gay people should be stoned to death”
“Most people are scared when they see a black pilot flying a plane ”
“Taylor Swift should reject feminism and submit to her husband”
“No one should be allowed to retire ”
“Leftists should not be allowed to move to red states”
“British Colonialism was what ‘made the world decent'”
“The guy who assaulted the Pelosis should be bailed out”
“Religious freedom should be terminated”
Multiple black politicians “stole white people’s spots”
“MLK Jr was “an awful person”
“The Great Replacement Theory is reality”
“Hydroxychloroquine cures COVID”
“Vaccine requirements are “medical apartheid”
“Guns deaths are acceptable in order to have a 2nd amendment”
“Women’s natural place is under their husband’s control”
“Parents should prevent their daughters from taking birth control”
“George Floyd had it coming, the Jan 6th protestors didn’t”
“The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “huge mistake”
Encouraged parents to protest mask mandates
“Mamdani winning in NY is a travesty because Muslims did 9/11 ”
“Muslims only come to America to destabilize Western civilization”
“Palestine “doesn’t exist” and those who support it are like the KKK ”
His shooting was awful and not at all appropriate, and the shooter should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and we need to get rid of the massive numbers of guns that ultimately caused this — but let’s not sanitize what a horrible human being Charlie Kirk spent his life being, nor dismiss the awful damage he did in his short time on earth.
@Tony W: Thanks for the litany of specific statements Kirk had made, all of which encourage a narrow minded, bigoted hate and a potential catalyst to violence in some. This was the 24/7 intolerance of a guy who wrapped himself in distorted religiosity.
@Tony W:
Kirk’s legacy goes far beyond the awful things he said. He actively worked to establish a political dictatorship. (If we are not there yet, it’s not for lack of trying.)
I’m not even saying his contribution was particularly important, but he wanted a society in which in-groups have rights and out-groups don’t.
And he won.
Specifically, SCOTUS, through the shadow docket, will give Trump everything he wants. If ICE can stop everyone who isn’t white, constitutional rights are a joke. And the law offers no recourse.
In other words, he wanted a society built on white male supremacy – which ultimately is a lawless society. And he got it.
To be clear, I’m not saying this makes his assassination a good thing – which it isn’t for very obvious reasons. But he helped break that (i.e., a rights-based society) which makes being temporarily politically powerless tolerable.
And it seems likely someone responded to that.
Agree with your letter. Killing should not be happening. That said, the right now has a martyr.
Steve
Let’s not jump to the conclusion that the shooter is one of ‘ours’. And let’s also be skeptical of anything Patel’s corrupted FBI comes up with.
Ezra Klein’s take here is glib and half-baked:
Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way (NYT)
I beg to differ. When Paul Pelosi was violently attacked, Kirk condoned it, spread false homophobic conspiracy theories about it, and called for a “patriot” to post bail for Pelosi’s attempted murderer.
Kirk decried “empathy” and said “it does a lot of damage.”
When six were killed in a Tennessee school shooting, Kirk responded by claiming the 2nd Amendment means some gun deaths are “worth it.”
Kirk once quoted the Bible to imply gays deserve to be stoned to death.
Kirk once listed prominent black leaders then suggested black women “lack proper brain processing power…”
This list is far from exhaustive. Odious, violent hatemongering should not be downplayed as a mere “difference of views.” Charlie Kirk build his brand on racist hate, homophobic vitriol, scorn for empathy, and defenses of violence.
No, that’s not the right way to practice politics. When Officer Brian Sicknick and Rep. Melissa Hortman were killed and assassinated by rightwing political violence, no one had a bad word to say about either. There was nothing bad to say. Because Hortman practiced politics the right way.
Getting rich from manufactured viral videos entitled “30 YEAR OLD MAN DESTROYS 18-YEAR OLD COLLEGE STUDENT ON ABORTION” does not elevate the discourse.
@DK:
Actual Charlie Kirk quote:
“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational”
Ironic.
@EddieInCA:
Makes perfect sense if the god in question is Moloch, or or any of the blod thirsty in the Aztec pantheon. they would happily grant rights in exchange for human blood.
These Christians are weird.
@Tony W: I see your point. I don’t want to defend him, but I do see his style as less angry than many others on the right.
Michael, your students (past and present) are luckier to have you then they probably are capable of realizing at this time.
Bravo on this careful and caring message. Hope is a disciplined practice. And at times like this, practicing it is so necessary and also so hard.
@HelloWorld:
It was. A lot of people he debated have talked about him being very respectful and personable.
Erza Klein, who I don’t think directly interacted with him, praised Kirk’s approach in the NYT today.
I’m of a different mind. I personally don’t think we can separate what is being said from the way it’s being said. As MLK reminded us so many times (usually in the works that don’t get read or talked about): Polite racism is still racism. In fact, it’s the most insidious type of racism.
@Matt Bernius: Matt, thank you so much for these kind and encouraging words. Much appreciated!
@Matt Bernius: Kirk’s “polite racism” is what made him dangerous. He gives cover to those who are a little weirded out by all this shit, but that’s an (R) by his name, so they’ll vote for him. Granny and grandpappy also loved God, but that’s all they had to believe in.