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America watched in horror when conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated and the predictable campus firestorm followed — not only grief but an ugly scramble by some academics to celebrate his death online. In the weeks since, professors and staff at multiple universities have been suspended or fired after social media posts that appeared to mock or justify the killing, prompting a national debate about accountability, decency, and the limits of speech.
One of the most explosive cases involved a tenured art professor at the University of South Dakota who called Mr. Kirk a “hate spreading Nazi” on Facebook after the killing and was set to be terminated by the school’s Board of Regents. The professor sued, arguing his off-campus, personal comments were protected by the First Amendment, and a federal judge temporarily blocked his firing while the legal fight unfolds — a reminder that even unpopular speech can be constitutionally protected.
Across the country university presidents and administrators rushed to discipline employees, citing community outrage and concerns about threats, even when some posts were on private settings or quickly deleted. The wave of discipline included tenured faculty, adjuncts, and staff — a chaotic mix that shows our institutions are failing to apply consistent standards and are instead bowing to political pressure.
Let’s be clear: celebrating a violent death is repulsive and many of these academics deserve condemnation from their peers and the public for poor judgment. But disgust cannot become a cudgel to allow summary firings without due process, or to chill conservative thought on campus while the left’s allies police speech selectively. Public universities in particular have a constitutional duty to protect viewpoint diversity, not to purge it when the outrage machine turns up the heat.
We’re also seeing legal pushback for a reason — government employers don’t get to strip away speech rights simply because the content is offensive to powerful figures or ideologies. Lawsuits, like the one filed after a Ball State employee was dismissed over a Facebook post, underscore that coercive public pressure and performative politics shouldn’t replace the rule of law or clear, narrowly tailored disciplinary standards. Conservatives must cheer these challenges when they defend free expression for everyone, not just when it favors our side.
The broader lesson for Americans is urgent: campuses have become battlegrounds where the left’s moralistic mobs and compliant administrators erase nuance and punish dissent. Voters and state leaders should demand transparent processes, reflexive protections for free speech, and accountability when universities capitulate to partisan outrage instead of following constitutional duty.
If conservatives want a country that still respects liberty, we must hold these institutions to account at the ballot box and in the courts, defend decency while defending due process, and never allow the price of a political opinion to be a summary loss of livelihood. Our freedoms are worth fighting for, and this moment calls for principled action from citizens who love country and constitution alike.
