In response to the horrific assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted Kirk’s podcast and urged listeners to “call out” anyone making celebratory remarks about Kirk’s murder. 

The encouragement from Vance and other right-wing figures fueled a McCarthyist crusade seeking to personally punish anyone who made comments about Kirk that were deemed unsavory. One analysis from the New York Times found that over 145 employees were fired or disciplined over statements they made online about Kirk’s death.

Earlier this month, leaked messages on the app Telegram revealed a pattern of violent hate speech among leaders of Young Republican groups across the country. The messages included racist and homophobic slurs, and positive appeals to Hitler and the Holocaust.

Although several Republican leaders denounced the messages, Vance dismissed the outrage, characterizing this as “a kid telling a stupid joke.”  

But Vance definitely believes in the importance of civility. 

The hypocrisy is immediately obvious. In his mind, anyone who regards Kirk and his beliefs with anything less than total sympathy should face personal consequences, while grace can be extended to Republicans spouting heinous hate speech. 

For Republicans like Vance, partisan beliefs are the determining factor in who should receive the protection of free speech. 

University of Minnesota political science professor Paul Goren said both parties appeal to free speech as a rhetorical tool to mobilize their base. 

“Free speech is incredibly easy to weaponize,” Goren said. “It’s done by both sides of the political spectrum.”

In recent years, the Republican Party has asserted a mission to protect freedom of speech. When conservative tech-billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and expressed his desire to lower the content moderation standards on the site.

However, Republican policies fail to capture this supposed regard for the First Amendment.

University communications professor Mary Vavrus said President Donald Trump’s administration consistently demonstrates a disdain for the First Amendment protections of free speech and free press. 

“There are a number of examples that, to my mind, illustrate that the Trump administration is working hard to not expand freedom of speech or enable further freedom of speech, but is producing a chilling effect on speech,” Vavrus said.

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, explicitly stated that media companies hoping to receive FCC approval for mergers and acquisitions should curtail their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

In order to secure approval for a merger with Skydance Media, Paramount, the parent company of CBS, made several concessions that included paying a $16 million settlement with Trump, eliminating DEI programs and implementing a “bias monitor” for CBS.  

“So CBS and ‘60 Minutes’ settled a totally baseless lawsuit by Trump, with one of the conditions being they had a news monitor who would make sure that they weren’t engaging in any political bias, which is really outrageous,” Vavrus said.

Since Trump took office, threats to higher education institutions have come with startling frequency. Earlier this month, Trump presented a compact to nine top universities, promising increased federal funds if they agreed to strict academic limitations.

“Their so-called compact would curtail free speech and academic freedom by forcing us to eliminate anything having to do with DEI,” Vavrus said. “That would intrude on how we teach our classes and what we teach.” 

The Professor Watchlist, a project started by the nonprofit Turning Point USA, co-founded by Kirk, has compiled over 300 professors, categorized by culture war buzz-words such as abortion, diversity, equity and inclusion and racial ideology. 

After being placed on the list, several professors began receiving threatening messages and death threats.

The watchlist, which Vavrus said poses a serious threat to universities and faculty, also includes eight professors from the University of Minnesota.

“It’s just not a game and it’s not a joke at all,” Vavrus said. “It’s really serious.”

Vavrus said the right wing’s repudiation of the Young Republicans’ heinous messages, while simultaneously mobilizing against those who criticize Kirk, serves as a deliberate shifting of what hate speech means and what it applies to.

“There’s this effort to redefine or just eliminate the whole concept of hate speech and turn it around so that hate speech is something critiquing Trump or the Trump administration,” Vavrus said.

For Republicans, freedom of speech serves as a tool to drum up support from a base that wants an excuse to be racist, not a reflection of genuine support for free discourse. The double standard is not a sign of ideological inconsistency because free speech was never a meaningful facet of their belief system to begin with.

Goren said he does not think calling out these discrepancies in free speech rhetoric would matter to political constituencies.

“People go along with what they already believe,” Goren said.

In that case, our attention to this hypocrisy as students in an institution of higher education is imperative. 

The First Amendment does not merely protect our right to speak — it ensures the public’s ability to learn. 

There’s a reason why higher education is attacked when authoritarianism rises. Universities are places of intellectual inquiry, critical thinking and questioning of authority. A threat to a professor’s ability to teach is as much a violation of the students’ First Amendment rights as it is of the educators.

So I choose to learn.