The Aftermath of an Assassination

The barbarians are at the gate, and in the mirror

President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Charlie Kirk, Founder and Executive Director of Turning Point USA, during a panel discussion at the Generation Next Summit in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex on Thursday, March 22, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Sept. 10, 3:16pm—I’m walking to my classroom from my office at Penn. I’d spent the day preparing for class, meeting with students, and chipping away at a book chapter. As I walk, my phone begins to buzz in my pocket. When I look, I get the news that conservative activist Charlie Kirk has been shot at a public event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. I know the campus. I taught for two years at Brigham Young University in Provo, a small city right next door to Orem, in the late 1990s. I shudder at what this might mean but try to put the event out of my mind so I can prepare to lead a seminar for much of the next three hours.

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Sept. 10, 3:31pm—This being 2025, I arrive to my classroom to find more than half the class already there, gawking at their phones and laptops and sharing with each other bits of information/rumors/conspiracies about the shooting in real time, including bloody clips of shooting itself, caught on video and instantly shared everywhere. The students are all abuzz with that familiar adrenaline rush we all get when riding a wave of BREAKING NEWS. The buzz builds further as we approach the start of class. I finally begin trying to get everyone’s attention as a student who’s just arrived learns from the others what has happened and responds by saying rather loudly, “good.” I raise my voice a little louder to quiet the chatter and begin class by issuing a reprimand. “Please don’t talk that way in here. Politics is an effort to live together despite our differences, to resolve our differences without violence. If violence takes the place of politics, we will be in deep trouble and things will get much worse than you’re used to. It will touch your lives in ways you can hardly imagine. So please don’t wish for that here.” Already feeling like I was a little out of control when I’d begun speaking, I conclude by addressing the offending student: “I’m sorry to single you out. I don’t mean to personalize this message. I could be speaking to anyone in here. What happened today is bad.”