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Legislation has prompted debate and challenges from some scholars
Two bills recently proposed to honor slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Oklahoma college campuses have prompted debate, with some professors arguing the proposals go too far and run afoul of the very principles Kirk espoused.
One week after Kirk’s assassination, Oklahoma state Sen. Shane Jett, who leads the Oklahoma Freedom Caucus, introduced the bills to honor the memory and legacy of the Turning Point USA founder.
The proposals seek to require Oklahoma’s public institutions of higher education to honor Kirk’s birthday, Oct. 14, as Charlie Kirk Free Speech Day, and “designate and develop a prominent area on its main campus as the ‘Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza.’”
If any student, employee or faculty member vandalizes the plaza, they would be terminated from enrollment or employment and fined for the cost of the damage, the OU Daily student newspaper reported.
OU Turning Point USA faculty adviser Gary Barksdale told OU Daily the student group is circulating a petition to build a statue of Kirk on the quad.
“I would be very proud of the University of Oklahoma if it did that,” Barksdale said, “because Charlie Kirk’s mission was going across college campuses in the United States, promoting free speech and promoting open dialogue and promoting civil discussion of important issues.”
Jeffrey Sachs, a political scientist at Acadia University who has been posting on X about the Kirk situation, told The College Fix the bills raise questions over First Amendment protections for students on public campuses.
He said the state should refrain from requiring campus leaders to adopt a position on a controversial political figure or event.
Pointing out that Sen. Jett has introduced several bills in recent years designed to combat what Senator Jett calls “indoctrination” on campus, “clearly [Jett] thinks universities should not be teaching students that one political viewpoint is right and the others are wrong.”
“Given that, I’m not sure I understand why he would support a bill that requires universities to declare Kirk to be ‘a voice of a generation, modern civil rights leader, vocal Christian, martyr for truth and faith.’”
Protection from viewpoint discrimination works both ways, the professor said, arguing the proposals may run afoul of principles Kirk defended.
“He should not require public colleges and universities to share [his personal] view or promote it on campus,” Sachs said. “I would feel the same way about a liberal state senator who wanted to require colleges and universities to have signs condemning Charlie Kirk as a bigot.”
Should the state hold Kirk up as a martyr, a student “might feel that their views are unwelcome on campus and that, in order to get along, they should remain silent,” Sachs said. “I imagine Kirk himself would be the first to recognize this danger, given his well-founded concern with self-censorship among conservative students.”
Other opponents to the bills disagree with Kirk’s entire approach to debate, and believe the state should refrain from honoring it.
Charles McNamara, a classics professor at the University of Minnesota, recently wrote an op-ed that Kirk’s approach to campus debates was a “partisan spectacle” unworthy of recognition.
“As the nation rushes into authoritarianism,” McNamara wrote, “monuments like those proposed in Oklahoma will formalize what has been merely implicit until now. These statues will erase the crucial difference between pundits and professors, and they will make official the transformation of college campuses from spaces of open inquiry into arenas for verbal cage-fighting.”
He added that Kirk’s murder was “morally abhorrent and indefensible.”
Sachs also told The Fix that Kirk’s murder “was a tragedy of the first order. My horror at his murder and sympathy for his family are total.”
Meanwhile, proponents of the plan defend it as honoring Kirk’s testament to free speech, open debate, and public faith. In his news release, Sen. Jett said “through the introduction of these pieces of legislation in Charlie Kirk’s honor, we will ensure his legacy of courage and conviction lives on in Oklahoma.”
Representatives for Sen. Jett and Turning Point USA did not respond to requests for comment.
Similar efforts to honor Kirk are ongoing in red states such as Florida, and at the White House, which posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor.
The bills will be considered when the state legislature starts its new session in February 2026.
MORE: Alabama instructor fired after celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder files First Amendment lawsuits
