Charlie Kirk calls for Arizona lawmakers to defund state universities at ASU event

On stage at Arizona State University and amid a politically fueled free speech controversy, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said state lawmakers should stop funding the school.

"As an Arizona taxpayer, I think the Arizona House has to defund Arizona State University," he said in front of a roughly 350-person crowd on Wednesday evening that included state Rep. Austin Smith, R-Wittmann, and state Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale. Kern was one of 11 Arizona Republicans who falsely posed as certified electors in an attempt to circumvent the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Kirk's comments at the event, hosted by the university's Turning Point USA chapter, marked the second time he spoke on the school's Tempe campus this year.

His first was during a February event hosted by a university center devoted to personal development and conservative values. Kirk and conservative radio host Dennis Prager were met with protest, and the talk fed political fires about campus free speech.

Ann Atkinson, the former director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development, publicly alleged that she lost her job over bringing Kirk and Prager to campus — a claim the university strongly denies. Later, Republican state lawmakers launched a committee to investigate the incident. Both Smith and Kern are members of the panel.

At Wednesday's event, just a handful of student protesters dotted the sidewalk outside the university's Katzin Concert Hall. Inside the event, Kirk and Prager were met with a packed house.

Turning Point USA officials did not make Kirk available to The Arizona Republic for questions. But he and Prager didn't hold back on stage while discussing free speech at ASU and ridiculing the university's professors. In April, ASU President Michael Crow asked Kirk to remove ASU's faculty from Turning Point USA's "professor watchlist" after several professors received harassing messages.

"These are truly empty, bad people," Prager said of ASU's faculty. He also called the faculty "intellectual lightweights," "cowards," "talentless," and "intellectually vapid."

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Those remarks come as conservatives question free speech rights on college campuses nationally. Prager said the recent controversy at ASU is a "microcosm of what is happening at every college campus."

In Arizona, some lawmakers could be willing to take Kirk's advice — which he revised later in the evening to include defunding the state's two other public universities, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. Earlier this month, Kirk was met with protests while visiting NAU.

State funding to public universities was slashed amid the Great Recession and has stayed mostly stagnant since then, making up smaller and smaller chunks of state universities' growing budgets. Smith said on Wednesday that he intends to spend "all of next session" taking ASU and its faculty to task over free speech.

Chilled faculty speech?

Kirk's last appearance in Tempe precipitated a letter of protest signed by nearly 40 ASU's honors college faculty members.

This time, professors shied away from speaking out. No faculty were outside the venue protesting, and several professors who opposed the February event were silent on the Wednesday talk on their social media platforms.

Calling Kirk and Prager "purveyors of hate" for attacks on women, minorities and the LGBTQ+ community, honors college faculty members condemned the February event. Their protest letter left some conservative politicians questioning whether conservative students feel comfortable expressing their opinions and attending events with right-wing speakers without fear of faculty retribution.

Kern, for instance, previously told The Republic that while faculty have the legal right to assemble and speak their minds peacefully, he questioned whether they should do so, given their positions at the university.

"That's a position of trust," he said. "They've been hired by the university, and I think they should just adhere to that position of trust. I think students that are impressionable, they see their professor out there ... that's a little intimidating."

A 75-page report ASU officials produced for state lawmakers on campus free speech earlier this month did not find that university officials or faculty chilled conservative speech.

The report confirmed that several student statements received by the university expressed concern that faculty members' social media activity or the faculty protest letter could have potentially discouraged students from attending the February event featuring Kirk and Prager.

However, the report found no evidence that any faculty member told students not to attend the February event or implied that attending might impact their grades. Numerous professors encouraged students to make their own judgments on the event, the report states. No student has publicly stepped forward to accuse a faculty member of intimidating them or threatening their grade.

In response to the report and lawmakers' comments, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released a statement on Tuesday affirming faculty members have the right to speech, including "the right to express disagreement with on-campus speakers and to protest campus events."

"We’ve heard from ASU faculty who fear retaliation for protesting the event," the organization said. "FIRE asks ASU to reaffirm faculty’s free speech rights to protest — and to attend — the event without risking their jobs."

ASU generally does an OK job with free speech, students say

Haakon Carraher, a 19-year-old ASU student studying psychology, said he was excited to hear Kirk speak on Wednesday.

He previously heard Kirk speak at his high school graduation ceremony, he said, and thought Kirk was "a really good orator." Since Carraher was homeschooled, the ceremony was held by the Arizona Families for Home Education.

"Imagine if you gave a frat boy really, really good political knowledge," Carraher said. "That's Charlie Kirk."

Carraher, who said he is Christian and generally identifies as a conservative, said he's had no problems with campus speech. He noted that he sometimes sees students representing leftist political thought tabling around campus and that they don't get shut down by the university.

"I think they do a pretty good job," he said. "I haven't really seen any harassment here on campus."

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Joshua Kim, a 23-year-old student studying electrical engineering, shared a similar assessment. He went to the February event featuring Kirk and Prager as well as state lawmakers' committee hearing on expression at ASU, he said, so he's been "in a lot of this controversy over free speech."

While standing in the security line to get into Wednesday's talk, Kim said he still has questions about exactly what happened with the T.W. Lewis Center. Generally, though, he feels that free speech is welcomed on campus.

"I think they do a good job, honestly, overall," he said.

Hypatia Meraviglia, a graduate student studying geology and a student worker, came out to protest Kirk's appearance on Wednesday. As queer students, they said that they feel targeted by "the hate and the genocide that Turning Point USA spreads."

"When I've been involved in this work in the past, I've gotten death threats," they said. "This is really serious stuff, and that's the reason I'm out here. Because I want a safer world for younger trans people who are like me."

Meraviglia said faculty usually promote open, inclusive dialogues on campus where all students can feel safe to express their viewpoints. But Meraviglia said it's harder to measure ASU as an institution as it relates to campus expression because it "depends on how you define free speech."

"To me, this, where you're promoting genocidal viewpoints, that is the opposite of free speech," they said. "What they want to do is remove people like me from the conversation. In my perspective, this is censorship wearing the clothing of free speech."

Sasha Hupka covers higher education for The Arizona Republic. Do you have a tip on Arizona's universities, community colleges or trade schools? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @SashaHupka. Follow her on Instagram or Threads: @sashahupkasnaps.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Charlie Kirk calls for Arizona lawmakers to defund universities