WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Benjamin Rothove: How Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Exposed the Dark Heart of Campus Culture

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

In the weeks since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, America’s education battleground has ignited into crisis. Benjamin Rothove, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, editor-in-chief of the Madison Federalist, and a Young Voices contributor, brings an insider perspective from his latest National Review article. He joins WRFH to discuss how academia has become the frontline of America’s cultural war.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Luke Miller, and with me today is Benjamin Rotho, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and editor-in-chief of the Madison Federalist. Benjamin is a campus transparency fellow at the Fund for American Studies and a Young Voices contributor. He also interned for National Review in the summer of 2025. Through all these different platforms, he has provided analysis on student-free expression and cultural issues, and recently, Benjamin wrote an article in the National Review about the reaction in higher education to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, particularly certain professors celebrating Kirk's death and what that reveals about academia. He also speaks about student fears of retribution

and a hyper-politicized campus climate and the future of Charlie Kirk's movement. Benjamin, thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for having me. So if you don't mind, tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and any places that people can find your work. My name is Ben Rotho. I'm a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I run our conservative newspaper here. You can read me there or occasionally I'm published elsewhere through Young Voices. Awesome. So your article in National Review from this week was about Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point USA organization.

You mentioned having met Charlie Kirk. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience? Yeah. So last year when Charlie had his big tour all around college campuses, one of the stops was at UW Madison. and I debated him because I wasn't thinking Frunning Point was doing enough. Now, one of the specific points I touched on was Harry Lakes, Senate race. I think that ended up not being Charlie's case, but the fact is that he was right about how he engaged with young people.

I didn't think Frum Point was working, but after the election, it was clear that I was completely wrong. Interesting. That sounds like a lot of fun. So what were some of the specifics of your debate with him there? Like, what was the argument? Was Carrie Lake's Senate race? I know I talked about that. I was thinking that she wasn't going to win.

And then we just talked a little bit more broadly about turning points strategies. And I was thinking that turning point strategies to young people weren't enough. Okay. So most of our listeners, myself included, have seen videos and clips of Charlie Kirk debating students at these events. You know, that's a big way he grew, turning point USA, spreading video of these campus events. But many of us never got to be in your shoes and actually experience what one of those events was like. So what was the atmosphere like? How would you describe the atmosphere of one of those events?

They were pretty fine. Like, there were hundreds, hundreds of people, like a gigantic crowd all around him. So there's just a gigantic line of people to try and talk to him. and it just goes on for hours. That's awesome. I never got to go to one of those kind of events myself, but I really would have loved to. In your opinion,

what was Charlie Kirk to the conservative movement? It's leader. I think that if you view a movement as separate from a single party, like what Charlie Kirk did was he really recognized the direction that conservatism was moving and really positioned himself as a force of leadership. So what he did was he forced,

he forged coalitions and brought disparate groups together to fight for a common cause. And you mentioned that he noticed that there was a gap in Republican messaging to young people. You wrote, Kirk recognized the disconnect between Republican messaging and young people. He believed that conservatives needed to do more to reach college students and that reforming higher education was a step towards national renewal. You also called him the most effective in the fight against the toxicity of campus culture. His organization, Turning Point USA, and a lot of his personal work was aimed at filling that gap at reaching young voters on behalf of conservatism.

So what was that gap and what do you think made him so effective at reaching young people? Because he was one. He was a young dude. Like, he knows how to talk to people around him. I think that that's one of the things that I was wrong about was that I didn't think that outreach to, like, fraternities and stuff, like work as well as it did, which he, he was able to read the room and really see the direction that the Republican Party was moving with its vote base. Just as a reminder, this is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Luke Miller speaking with Ben Rothov. Ben, a major focus of your article was about the reaction to Charlie Kirk's assassination that took place a few weeks ago, tragic, tragic event.

But the reaction to that particularly in higher education. So what has that reaction been in your experience and through what you've seen? I think anybody who's been following was happening saw that there were so, so many professors who took to either celebrate his death or if not celebrate his death, condemn him as a bigot or a white supremacist, Christian nationalist, or like made up terms that any normal American would think was a completely unreasonable reaction. But because these professors are operating in such an echo chamber, they didn't realize how crazy the stuff they said was. And you mentioned that some of these professors have used blue sky as a method for communicating

might be one of those echo chambers that you're mentioning. For those of our listeners who aren't aware of what that is, could you explain a little bit about blue sky? Blue sky, I wasn't expecting this. Blue sky is where the absolute nut jobs who are convinced that Elon Musk is trying to use Twitter for some evil nefarious purpose. So what they do is they go on to Blue Sky, which is just a gigantic left-wing echo chamber where it's it's not even normal liberals it's the crazy left wing liberals who just talk back and

forth and back and forth to each other and just keep moving further and further and further to the last that's interesting i know it's kind of a new a new thing i hadn't really heard of blue sky until this year and then i've seen screenshots and things that people have posted of different reactions on blue sky to political events to the assassination attempt on president trump and i've seen a lot of what you're talking about i mean i don't have the app myself but from my knowledge It was created as the left-wing alternative to X. Twitter now called X when Elon Musk took it over. But that's interesting that there are college professors on there doing that kind of stuff,

because people tend to think of professors of people who are highly educated as wanting to engage in the conversation, as wanting to avoid those kind of echo chambers. What do you think that says about the state of the professoriate? What happens is that so many in academia truly don't understand. how the real world works because they spent their entire life in academia. Whenever you go straight from college to another six years at another college and then just start working in a third college, you don't really get to go out and experience the world.

You don't really get to engage with people of opposing viewpoints. So what happens with like in a polyside apartment, there are so many times where it's only liberal professors who are educated by only liberal professors and only work with liberals. So conservatism is just foreign ideology to them. And I know this did not come up in your article, but do you know just off the top of your head the approximate percentage of how many people in academia are left wing? I don't know the exact number for broadly speaking, but at UW Madison, they did an analysis of political donations. And 99% of political donations from the humanities department at UW Madison go to Democrats.

Wow. And that's something that I've seen clips of Charlie Kirk talking about, talking about, talking about professors and their political donations being heavily left wing. And kind of off of that, you wrote in your article, Kirk's assassination had the consequence of proving that he was exactly right about the decaying state of higher education. So what exactly did you mean by that and how does the state of higher education affect students? So Charlie Kirk was constantly talking about how universities are not actually places of free speech in our places where crazy liberal professors say crazy things to students. The reaction to his death showed the entire world with these crazy liberal professors were saying. And I think that the effect on students is that it radicalizes

some to the left and then any of the normal ones have to really, really learn how to defend their beliefs. Do you think that also has the effect of silencing political views of people on the right who might be scared? Oh, yeah. For sure. Like the number of times that I hear about students you know, be Madison who have to lie to get a good grade is unacceptable. Just another reminder. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Luke Miller speaking with Ben Ratho. Ben, you talked about the response to Charlie Kirk's death from the left, but what about the response from the right, particularly with Charlie's organization Turning Point USA? So, Turning Point USA is seeing a huge uptick and chapter requests. I know that there is engagement

going up in schools all around Wisconsin. And just young people have been in like college Republicans. I'm pretty sure we had our biggest meeting since at least before COVID, if not before then. So I think that it's energizing young people to stand up and fight for their views. Because I was scared initially that there were going to be lots of conservatives to kind of go into a shell and self-centered themselves even more out of fear. Do you think there's any credit to the statement that a lot of left-wing pundits are making that right-wingers are going to be radicalized by this?

that they might tend toward violence as a way of fighting fire with fire? Have you seen any of that kind of reaction? I mean, I'm sure somewhere out there, there's like one or two, but it's not a broad reaction. That's not how the right functions. There's not going to be just mass radicalization from this. There isn't going to be a rise of right-wing violence. That's what distinguishes us from the left.

So off of that, what do you think the response should be from the right to Charlie Kirk's death? to go knock on doors and make sure that the 2026 midterm and every future midterm, or just election in general, that conservatives get out to vote, and then also just go to church because that's what Charlie would have wanted. So since Charlie Kirk's death, the federal government has had some responses to this as well, like the House resolution a couple weeks ago honoring his memory, and the federal government, particularly President Trump, have also announced crackdowns on left-wing terrorist groups.

Have you been happy with the federal? government's response to this, or do you think that they need to do more? I honestly have been following the specifics of that super closely. I'd be happy with cracking down on left-ling terrorism, though. So I'm happy that the government is exploring that. Okay. At the end of your article, you say, Kirk has become a martyr for Gen Z conservatives,

and the institutions he built will continue to shape our future. While Kirk may never see the outcome of his revolution in this life, it is our responsibility to finish what we started. What do you think that that responsibility entails, particularly on college campuses and in academia? They not give up the fight, not see what happened to Charlie and think that, oh, it's time for conservatives to step back to stop fighting for higher ed. I think that really what we need to do is to do exactly what Charlie did, go to college campuses and try to make a change. Do you think that there's a way for conservatives to try to infiltrate academia, particularly the professoriate? I think a broader there's like a rise at lots of state schools are launching these like civics institutions.

I know that like Arizona State University, Ohio State, a few others. I think that that's probably one way to start to make a change. I think another one is just to actually encourage conservatives to be in higher ed. Because I think that there's just one problem is that a lot of them, because they know it's so difficult to get a PhD or something without having to sacrifice your abuse, just try not to even fight for it. So what would you say to those young conservatives who might be afraid to speak out or afraid to stand up for their beliefs in what they feel are increasingly hostile campus environments? You have to keep fighting. You can't let a lone shooter silence an entire movement. Alrighty.

Well, that's all the questions that I have for you today. Thank you very much for your time. Awesome. Thank you for having me. Our guest has been Benjamin Rothov, student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and editor-in-churchase. Chief of the Wisconsin Federalist. He is a young voices contributor who's provided analysis on student-free expression and cultural issues, and his recent work on the response of academia to the assassination of Charlie Kirk appeared in National Review. And I'm Luke Miller on Radio

Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.