Over the past 10 years, conservative students and faculty at NYU have only been welcome in the public forum insofar as we participate in “bipartisanship” — a misleading sense of unity when only one set of views is considered acceptable. At a university where there are pretty much no openly conservative professors left, we have endeavored to build spaces — both on and off campus — where we can engage in open dialogue around issues that we care about. However, left-wing groups at NYU have attempted to defame the MAGA movement as “fascist,” “white supremacist” and “misogynistic,” a form of misappropriated rhetoric which we believe is directly responsible for the kind of radicalization responsible for the recent political assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Kirk’s platform was simple: He believed in free markets, cultural conservatism, patriotism and upholding Christian values. He believed in a society where people could feel safe enough to ride public transportation systems without being murdered in cold blood by someone who has been arrested 14 times. And, perhaps most relevant to our school, he believed in a future where young people could express their beliefs in collegial public forum debate without fearing for a political assassination.
Although we have a great deal of respect for prior generations of Democratic leadership, we have become severely disillusioned with the American left’s descent into globalism, socialism and open-border idealism. Our platform is grounded in historically moderate political and cultural positions, but our increasingly extremist opponents have engaged in a slander campaign of misappropriating vile terms such as “fascism” to describe mainstream conservatism and the new right more generally.
A quick reality check for many of our students and faculty: The Republican party is not, in fact, attempting a “fascist takeover of the U.S. government,” contrary to what the recent guest essay published by the NYU College Democrats would have you believe. Last time we checked, winning an election with popular support does not count as fascism. If the left is truly so afraid of authoritarianism, they would recognize that misusing the term to describe the MAGA movement and its proponents will only make the term less poignant to use should a real fascist movement ever gain any traction in these United States.
While our traditional values of strong borders, cultural conservatism and the general prioritization of the interests of our own country’s citizens over the interests of others have been increasingly labeled as extremism and a threat to democracy, mainstream left-wing groups at our school have been quietly adopting a platform of “wokeism,” or Marxism, and Islamism, combining forces to dismantle the Western values that make this country great.
In May 2025, our very own NYU College Democrats announced their official mayoral endorsement of Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the Uganda-born assemblyman who is planning to open Soviet-style city-owned grocery stores, wants to “Trump-proof” New York City by designating the city as a sanctuary for both illegal immigrants and the LGBTQ+, and has declined to condemn the radical Islamist phrase “globalize the intifada.” To us, it seems that the Democratic party and its supporters on our campus have strayed very far away from the values that have defined their party for most of its modern history. It seems to us that they are the real extremists, despite their constant efforts to portray us as such.
In April 2025, Queering Faith, one of several LGBTQ+ student clubs officially sponsored by the university, hosted a “Trans Self Defense Workshop,” using university funds to hire a martial arts instructor to teach LGBTQ+ students how to “fight back,” as stated on the flyer used to advertise the event — a chilling incitement to violence considering that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was inspired by his “pro-gay and trans-rights oriented” beliefs, according to his mother. Does “fight back” mean assassinate those we disagree with? Should university funds be used to train radicalized students for violence at all?
On the day of Kirk’s murder, NYU journalism professor Elizabeth Spiers published “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning” in The Nation, in which she likens him to Joseph Goebbels, the reich minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, in a bizarre analogy used to justify his death and the ongoing vilification of mainstream conservatism. These are the exact kinds of lies and shameful rhetoric which we believe radicalizes people. How can conservative students be expected to learn from a faculty member who lies about what Kirk said to excuse his murder? Does NYU want her to represent our school with hate and violence?
A recent WSN article reporting on the candlelight vigil we hosted to mourn Kirk and honor his legacy unfairly accused both “attendees and protesters” of engaging in verbal altercations, a warped misrepresentation when only the counterprotesters’ side was observed to engage in those kinds of hostilities, as corroborated by videos we published to our Instagram. We believe it is of extremely low moral character to counterprotest an event mourning someone’s death. But more importantly, we are confused as to how our attendees’ calls to remain peaceful throughout the evening could be equated to counterprotesters openly calling for our deaths, especially in a non-opinion piece of supposedly impartial reporting. Perhaps it is because of years of mislabeling us as fascists and white supremacists that counterprotesters feel so comfortable making open threats on our lives.
The message has become clear: The NYU community has no interest in us. But we will not stand idly by while our country is stolen out from underneath us and while vile, far-left rhetoric is used to excuse political violence. Our forefathers laid down their lives to give us this nation, and we believe that we cannot afford to lose it.
Regardless of whether you align yourself with the MAGA movement, please join us in condemning the misappropriation of terms like “fascist” against mainstream American conservatives, the radical left’s encroachment into mainstream Democratic institutions and politics and the politically-motivated assassination of Kirk. We hereby call for NYU College Democrats, NYU Students for a Democratic Society, NYU Young Democratic Socialists of America, NYU Queer Union and NYU Queering Faith to officially denounce the assassination of Kirk as an unacceptable form of political violence that has no place in our republic.
If they refuse to, we won’t be going anywhere. We are here to stay. We are the partisans of law and order, and we will no longer participate in bipartisanship with groups that perpetuate the rhetoric that got Kirk murdered. In the wise words of our wonderful Vice President JD Vance, “I am desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend. I want it so badly. But I will tell you a difficult truth: we can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable, and when we work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country.”
In God We Trust
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