Rewriting History 101: A Masterclass in Missing the Point

Charlie Kirk called out bias. The academic elite call it violence.

I have a favorite Anne Lamott quote framed in my office: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

For a writer, it’s a powerful reminder to never edit yourself to protect people who didn’t protect you; to stop cushioning reality so it lands softly on the egos that caused the bruise in the first place.

I really do own this mug. It sits right next to my “I’m silently correcting your grammar” sign.

A bunch of whiny academics clearly never got the memo. Turns out “tell your story” is only inspiring advice when it’s your story and you’re the victim. When it’s your students talking, it’s “harassment,” “hate speech,” or “the rise of fascism.” Oh, and it’s all Charlie Kirk’s fault.

“Professors were subject to political violence because of Kirk and the culture he ushered in, the culture that is being whitewashed,” said Matthew Reznicek, an associate professor of medical humanities at the University of Minnesota (posting on Bluesky, of course). “The thing about memorializing Kirk as the Socrates of our era… is how he was also a know-nothing.”

In case you missed it, this mid-level scholar of grievance studies is arguing that the man who almost single-handedly moved the needle on youth politics and built one of the most influential grassroots movements in modern conservatism wasn’t all that sharp.

Here’s what actually happened: Nearly a decade ago, Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA got fed up with ivory tower oracles trying to shove woke ideology down students’ throats. So they started the Professor Watchlist, basically a running roster of university faculty who have been accused of “discriminating against conservative students and advancing leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

“It’s not ‘Professor Blacklist’ and it’s not ‘Professor Hitlist,’” Kirk said at the time, describing the list as “an awareness tool”. “We’re not calling for the termination of these professors—let the schools make their own decisions.”

In other words, it wasn’t a witch hunt—it was Yelp for academia.

Here’s an example of how it worked: in 2017, former Georgetown Law adjunct professor Preston Mitchum tweeted that, “Yes, ALL white people are racists. Yes, ALL men are sexist. Yes, ALL cis people are transphobic. We have to unpack that. That’s the work!”

He said that. In print. On purpose. TPUSA figured parents forking over $118,980 [*not a typo] a year might want to know what kind of enlightenment their tuition was buying.

The post landed Mitchum on The List, after which he claims he received intimidating calls and emails—threats he obviously wouldn’t have received if those right-wing lunatics at TPUSA hadn’t exposed him for being a neo-Marxist.

“The entire goal is censorship,” Mitchum said. “Like fundamentally, the goal is to get you to stop talking.”

No, Professor Mitchum, the goal is to make you answerable for your words. Speed limits aren’t designed to get people to stop driving—they’re there to put some guardrails around an inherently dangerous activity. The Watchlist is essentially 1-800-How’s-My-Teaching? If you don’t want your hand bitten off, maybe don’t stick it in the shark tank. Just a thought.

Even though the list has been out there for nearly a decade, the desperate attempt to rewrite Charlie Kirk’s life and his legacy in the wake of his assassination has kicked into overdrive. A man known for peaceful discourse and faith-driven conviction had the audacity to expose what was happening in classrooms across the country? Clearly he was an ideological arsonist; a fascist political operative; a preacher of hate, bigotry, and division. It’s character assassination masquerading as indignation, with the added convenience that the target they’re attacking can’t fight back.

The irony—something the Left is famously allergic to—is glaring. A man who showed up in hostile spaces and invited open debate is now being blamed for the animosity directed at him for doing so.

Charlie Kirk asked questions. He welcomed dissent. He was a man of faith. He never called for violence, never threatened or silenced anyone, never published private information. He simply told students they should probably pay attention to what they were being taught. The outrage that ensued has little to do with who said it and everything to do with the fact that it was said at all. (And maybe that it didn’t come with a pronoun survey.)

Professors denounce the list as harassment and intimidation. Turning Point insists it’s transparency. The rest of the country, predictably, splits itself down the middle—half calling it accountability, half calling it fascism. Because everyone knows that fascism is defined by centralized power under a dictator, the suppression of dissenting opinion, and the ruthless quoting of people with tenure.

“I’m on Charlie Kirk’s professor watchlist,” boasted Chris Lamb, a journalism professor at Indiana University at Indianapolis (on where else but Bluesky). “I know professors who were harassed and threatened after appearing on the list. Others were physically assaulted. Kirk’s murder is a tragedy—as is any murder. But let us not praise Charlie Kirk. He was a SOB.”

Right. And it’s the undercover cop’s fault when you get caught shoplifting.

If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

To be clear, the Watchlist isn’t a crowd-sourced modern-day Hot or Not, where anyone can upload any name they’d like and let the flogging commence. The site, moderated by TPUSA, explicitly states that while they accept tips for new additions, they “only publish profiles on incidents that have been reported and published via a credible source.”

Nevertheless, the professors who’ve earned a distinguished spot on the site insist it’s Kirk who was the problem. He was dangerous, a purveyor of racism, a “threat to academic freedom.” By that logic, parachutes are a “threat to skydiving.”

“If you make statements that right-wing politicians don’t like, you can lose your job. Period. That is chilling,” said Isaac Kamola, who runs Faculty First Responders, a crisis hotline that helps professors cope with the scandal of being quoted publicly. “The Professor Watchlist planted that seed.”

To be clear, we’re talking about people entrusted with shaping young minds—who then used that power and privilege to celebrate a man’s murder. I guess professor school forgot to explain that free speech isn’t the same thing as consequence-free speech.

Dr. Stacey Patton is an Assistant Professor of Multimedia Journalism and a Research Associate at Morgan State University. She’s also the author of such heartwarming, bridge-building articles as “‘Is He Dead?’ Why Black People Are Not Grieving The Failed Assassination of Donald Trump.” and “‘I Am Charlie Kirk’ Is the New Way to Confess You’re a Racist. Thanks for the Warning.” She’s on the Watchlist. This, obviously, is because of all of that violence Kirk was spreading.

The media coverage follows the same script. Profiles frame Kirk as “polarizing” or “controversial,” simply because he called out ideological indoctrination and dared to question the hallowed, untouchable halls of academia. It’s a strange inversion: the man who was killed is now being blamed for creating the environment that killed him. And his critics are positioning themselves as the real victims of a movement whose founder can no longer defend himself.

Lamb—the journalism professor who called Charlie Kirk an “SOB”—refers to Turning Point as “the Hitler Youth.” Shawn Schwaller, an assistant history professor at California State University, Chico, called the slain conservative activist a “white Christian supremacist.” Another Watchlist warmer, former sociology professor Ken Storey, said, “we can’t let [Charlie’s] horrific murder overshadow the division that he helped sow.”

In other words, the effort to erase Charlie Kirk’s historical footprint is already underway, his calls for liability being reframed as evidence of censorship and extremism rather than the natural consequences of bad behavior.

Consider a simple truth: if there were no flies, nobody would have invented a fly swatter. The Watchlist wasn’t born out of malice—it was born out of necessity. It exists because left-wing bias on campus is real and because it’s a threat.

“The problem is not with the list,” echoed Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “The problem is that the list was ever necessary.”

The funny-not-funny part: the Left’s too busy complaining about being on it to ask why it had to be made in the first place.

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