BY MATTHEW BOEDY

The last week I have been around the world on Zoom interviews. From Australia news to Europe to the United States in every time zone. I had to turn down Chinese state TV. And I also had a series of awkward attempted dialogues with students. Not just about the events of the last week, beginning with the brutal assassination on a college campus, but my dizzying media tour that delayed some of their conferences with me.

For those who don’t know, to cite the title of the Mother Jones interview with me out today, “His Book on Charlie Kirk Was About to Come Out. Then His Subject Was Murdered.”

It has been a tightrope trying to speak as an expert on a person and subject that so many people are coming to know of for the first time all the while having long been that person’s chief critic. And of course, the elephant in the room is that this media tour is also essentially a book tour. Not to mention the other elephant in the room that the group started by Kirk, Turning Point USA, was a fervent despiser of higher education. I tried to offer some words on that to Inside Higher Ed. 

I am not trying to center myself in this story but I think there is something all of us can learn from my week. Some of those lessons I taught at the media relations panel I helped lead at the Summer Institute at Morehouse. Lessons such as having talking points, anticipating questions, and of course never getting into a debate on social media.

But those are trivial compared to the larger issues this particular shooting brings to light. Most sadly, we have another student on a rooftop with a gun. I was so taken back by the first in Butler Pennsylvania, I wrote this: “Maybe one of us talked to him. Maybe one of us had him in their office. Maybe one of us saw the sadness . . . Maybe one of us said something.”

This new student on a rooftop apparently and allegedly was killing for different reasons, more directly negative ones, targeting their victim. And that makes this all the more worse. Makes this moment in our nation all the more worse.

And it is bad for professors.

I wrote at the end of that other lament that “maybe one of us will be on a list.” We are there. The list is real and some of us are being fired for words. And the larger forces attacking our institutions are set to use this death to further their cause against us.

I have also heard from faculty and read about others retreating into their silos due to a lack of power to change campus. Or perhaps the furthering of those larger threats against our profession. I urge you to rethink that. We need everyone from every discipline.

I also urge those who think this too shall pass to rethink that. It may. But it won’t be the same afterwards. Bit by bit we have gotten to where we are and bit by bit things can get worse. Consider the new “state-run” accreditation agency being pushed by several Southern university systems. Accreditation may feel like an abstract concept, something above your pay grade. But it’s a “bit” in my mind. It will come for us all soon.

The last week has been particularly difficult for me because of the way in which Charlie Kirk died—by a gun on campus. Advocating against guns on campus was why I was targeted by Turning Point in the first place. It’s more than just a professional irony. It forces me to consider again why that advocacy matters so much—because of the damage gun violence leaves in its wake. His wife and children will be forever affected.

I can’t speak for all, but I get a sense this week has been difficult for many, most especially students and the subset of those who adored Kirk. If you know them and they are within your influence, reach out. My campus chapter of Turning Point is having a vigil on Friday, for example. Some of you did similar things during the encampment and protests of recent times. Do it again. And again. It matters.

Contributing editor Matthew Boedy is the president of the Georgia conference of the AAUP and works at the University of North Georgia. He can be reached through email or his Twitter account @matthewboedy.