In this panel from cpac, a discussion about free speech on College Campuses and strategies for giving conservatives a greater voice. Speakers include the chair from the college of the College Republican committee. This is 30 minutes. Hello, cpac. Really nice to be in a place where i am not being protested. How about you . Wonderfully tolerant people. We probably should have run out to walked out to rocket maam. Title of ourhe session today. We are going to talk about College Campuses and the problems we see and the offensive things that groups are doing on campus. Charlie, tell us about yourself. I am charlie kirk. This is my fifth cpac. I am the founder of turning point usa. Wide studenton activist movement focused on the idea of Smaller Government and Free Enterprise. We believe america is the greatest country in the history of the world. And we believe Free Enterprise is the most assured way to lift people out of poverty. Wildlyld not be controversial things to say on a campus. It really goes to the core of the fight that we are in on College Campuses. Of thise the future country and western civilization will be decided on college and high school campuses. It is a cultural issue. Are we going to be a country that can tolerate different ideas . Are we going to be a country that allows the discourse of free speech to exist. That is at the heart and soul of the issue. Speaking of the heart and soul, the debate often gets confused. What i like about turning point in what you focus on are the principles that have made america the greatest country in the world. When you talk to his when you talk to students, what is their perspective . Because of our infected Education System, young people are told that conservatives are a gated, racist, and homophobic and liberals are the party of freedom. It is the opposite. Liberals like to say they are the prochoice ones. They do not believe actually in freedom at all. It is our opportunity as an organization to say we are the defenders of freedom and liberty. You are the conformists. You are the antifreedom party. You believe in onesizefitsall solutions while we are fighting for individual choice. Because of that, we see a huge amount of opportunity. You were going to hear from a personal hero of mine, and schapiro who is amazing. He is shapiro and amazing. I have never seen elvis and ben shapiro in the same room. Of the is the core issue. College campuses have become places where they want people to look different but think the same. Their idea of diversity is skin color and Ethnic Diversity which is fine. But that is easy. It is the intellectual, ideological diversity that maturity happens. When you have an Education System that is so dominated ipo smarter to us and neomarxists, you have a whole Education System that is spitting out leftist automatons. Without a capacity to think. The left has feelings. We have history, logic, perspective and an understanding of where our ideals come from. Philosophically, when you tried to get your message across , which you have to thousands of students at your conferences. How do you explain from aphis from a philosophical level how the constitution is so important to young people . A great question. Socialism is the worst idea of the 20th century and we must defeat it at every turn. It is a danger to humanity. Never back down from our vehement, antisocialist as. It comes down to a couple of key questions. Where do you think rights come from . Bureaucrat or do your rights come from a creator . Once you can answer some of these fundamental questions, then you can have a philosophical construct of what you believe politically. Bad philosophy leads to bad politics. The left philosophy is simple. There is no absolute truth. Most mustffers the win. I call it the oppression olympics. That is what is happening on College Campuses. Who wins . Whoever suffers the most. It should be the opposite. They make everyone selfreview suffered equally. I might suffer what i can make good choices to overcome my bad circumstances. The left wants something opposite. Philosophically, here is the issue. If you do not trust government, why would you want to make government bigger . That is what i do not understand. Socialists say they do not trust government. We will bring out a couple more panelists. On a final point with you, i want to talk about the offensive. We hear about the bad things on College Campuses. Conservatives are making some headway when it comes to fighting back and getting a message across. I have never been more optimistic. I go to the College Campuses and we are filling up lecture halls. There are wonderful organizations doing great work on College Campuses. If you look at ben Jordan Peterson has become an unbelievable you know, he is unbelievable. Thats the best way i can put it. It really shows there is curiosity for these issues. It is a byproduct of the left. An unintended consequence. Think dont believe in dialogue or discussion or stifling in other opinion. It has paved the way for what i believe is going to be the greatest conservative revolution in American History led by young people for freedom and for a principled approach to defend western civilization to say it is ok to hear something you disagree with. Just because youre offended doesnt mean youre right. We need to be able to hear ideas that challenge our viewpoints. These are people that hate this country. They dont want to defend what makes it great. I look at the diversity and the intel capacity, the conservative movement. We are going to win and they are going to lose. Yeah. Absolutely. Were going to bring out the rest of our panelists so you can hear what the conservative movement is doing on campus. First we have grant from Young American freedom and foundation. Cameron thornton, the chairman of the c. N. C. Are they coming . Hello . Hello. Come on down. Marcus from the steamboat institute. And steven from the Leadership Institute. All right. I am so outnumbered. You are outnumbered. I want to start by allowing each of you to introduce yourself. They are doing the same thing on cam bus but there are a lot of them on campus. My name is marcus. Last year i served as the student body president at the niversity of colorado in boulder. Now im just working to really help student leaders across the country hopefully do the same things. Im excited to be here and on the panel. Hello everybody. My name is steven. I work at the Leadership Institute. Hey, there we go. We try every single day to train as many conservative and liberty minded people as possible and we do it in all 50 states with the skills necessary to succeed. We know you have to learn how to win and well make it happen. All right. To the right side. Im chairman to have Republican National committee. Do we have any College Republicans in the house . Were celebrating our 125th anniversary year and were all across the country paving the way for the next generation. Awesome. Im grant. Young americans for freedom. Eah. I have the honor to represent hundreds of you in this audience today. Give yourselfs a round of applause. You are fighting every day on our College Campuses for Free Enterprise. Limited government. A Strong National defense. I had the honor to work with each one of you. Looking forward to the panel today. Were going to take off where you left off. You take a lot of conservative speakers and get them on campus which is not an easy thing to do. Believe me. Im one of the people that tries to get on campus. It takes a lot of effort. Not because of me. Hear in the news with the controversies, the security fees and the protesting. If you want to know how a day looks when youre trying to bring ben shapiro to campus or ann coulter. Yeah. At the university of michigan and my high school as well, i osted over 14 conservative speakers. I see this all of the time. Over the four years at the university of michigan, things at first were not easy. Things were hard. We worried about protesters, we worried about hecklers. Things have gotten better. This is why it is so important for conservative students to be active on their College Campuses to make a difference. At the university of michigan, for our debates, the dean of our liberal arts school moderated that and now the university of michigan is supporting our events with tens of thousands of dollars. There making sure our events are secure, and none of this wouldve happened without what we are doing oncampus. This is what you should do, too. [applause] i am lucky. Other campuses across the country are not so lucky. At the university of minnesota, there is an event with ben schapiro this monday, but you now what the university of minnesota is saying . They are saying your ideas are so odious to us we are going to put you on a part of campus that is not easily accessible to public transportation. Katie boo. We will do it at a time when most students are not able to attend. We sent a demand letter and if they do not agree to our demands we will see them in court. [applause] katie awesome. Arcus, i want to come down the aisle to you. You are a student at uc boulder, student body president . Last year. Katie how did you get in that position . Having good people around you and a message that resonates with students. One of our platform was restoring whether that was how to bring a starbucks or pizza hut to campus or speaking on their behalf at the state capital. We did not represent the boulder students but the entire student body of the public Education System. Katie i want you to expand on that because we see these free speech zones and they are really just places located on campus for people who cannot hear ideas they are uncomfortable with. Talk about that process. Free speech zones are misleading. It sounds like a space you can go that is a bastion of free speech. In reality is a tiny place on campus located on the far side where it is not convenient for students to get to and that is the only place that students or Community Members can engage in spontaneous expressions of activity. I know groups that are sitting on stage, turning point usa has a poster that says that, we believe the First Amendment should apply to every square inch of the United States of america. [applause] we started the process off to get rid of free speech stones by having a Student Government resolution, one line made the university mad. I said that the First Amendment of the United States constitution shall plot every square inch of the university of colorado at boulder. That was a strong statement that the students passed unanimously and it was able to then carried to the state capital to get rid of them once and for all. Katie that brings accountability. When you have the First Amendment and every inch of a classroom it brings accountability to professors. When i was at the university of arizona i was on a Radio Station and i would talk about all the things professors were saying in class and my parents do not think i was going to graduate. I urge you guys do that and bring transparency to your classrooms. Speaking of journalism, exposing the campus environment, you a contributor at campus reform. Talk to us about some of the stories, the most outrageous stories you have to write . At the Leadership Institute we exposed liberal bias on College Campuses across the entire country. There was a great plethora of crazy instances that are happening. Use cf, they had a liberal fight club, where they were training leftists and progressives to earn how to fight and they specifically do not allow republican and conservative students into this fight lub. Katie can you define fight lub . The first rule is you do not talk about fight club. They had a series of classes where they were bringing in instructors, teaching them how to fight so they could be the next antifa or the next by any means necessary. It happens all the way from middle barry to berkeley. There was one recently where a Jesuit Catholic University would not allow Steven Crowder to speak on their College Campus, this is a man who was prolife and profamily and the supposedly Catholic School will not allow him to speak. Idiculous. Katie that is crazy. Chandler, we will go to you. Is being a republican on campus tough . It is not it is not easy to be a College Republican. Free speech is not a republican issue or a democrat issue, it is an american issue. It is an issue every single american should support. Oncampus campus we are starting to see that on the left and our friends on the left understand that. I think the Republican Party should be the party of free speech because i sure as we start advocating for free speech on our campus, we will win the argument. Katie to followup on that, you do a little bit different work than these guys do, how do you connect conservative students on campus to the political process utside the boundaries of College Campuses . Our core mission is to grow the Republican Party. We cannot win elections if we do not win young voters. We need to get all of our friends back in our communities and back on campus to work on republican campaigns, get involved, and vote republican. Katie i want to go back to you, charlie. It all comes back to the principles of free speech and talking about uncomfortable things like the Second Amendment on College Campuses. How do you take that message and package it for a millennial and younger generation. Charlie our Education System has put feelings above thinking. I see it on television a lot, they say how do you feel about an issue. I do not care about how people feel about anything. Feelings are relevant. I care about how you think about things. I have never made a good decision when im angry. I never make a decision when i am sad. I do make good decisions when i think. Critical thinking is something that is being removed from our universities, and this idea of free speech, the most intolerant people in the world are those that preach tolerance, especially on College Campuses. They are the first ones to shout down a speaker. Theyre the first one to pull a fire alarm when they hear something they disagree with. From a young age, the education says you hear something you disagree with, you are offended, you must resort to silencing that person. Disagreement must mean silencing. That is the basis of western civilization. We hear things all the time. The university has become the least diverse place in america and that is what all these champions of freedom are doing so effectively and that is why the conservative movement is going to win. Katie i want you to expand on that a little bit in terms of the hostility toward different ideas and the thing you have to do just are present another side of an argument. One thing i think people should know, and you have experience in this is well, after you go to a College Campus and you give a speech, regardless of the chaos before hand, you always have students who come up and say i did not agree with you when i walked in the door, and i still do not agree with you, but i understand where youre coming from, or the more positive result is they say they have changed their mind about a certain topic. Can you talk about the importance of that and how you can make a lot of change when it comes to presenting uncomfortable ideas to the left . I think universities are destroying themselves. Their ideas they are indoctrinating the students with are the ideas the students are then using to wreak destruction on these universities that we see at berkeley. I think it is in the universitys interest to change the way they approach and embrace the diversity of ideas. That is what ive been doing on campus. One example, i have had people chanting the f word outside my apartment and this was after the university of michigan issued this new pronoun policy. Have you guys heard of this . Not only 38, 58 pronouns that you see on facebook, it is unlimited your it it was a blank box. I started a Hashtag Campaign and i and sorted into my box his majesty. My professors have to call me his majesty every day in class. Katie i love it. That is so great. [applause] do not get me wrong, this is not out of disrespect, this is because the policy is nsane. I received tons of pushback. I heard from a lot of people on the left coming out and supporting me. That is why it is so important or students to stand out for what they believe in on campus. When you stand up for what you believe in, people will follow you. You are the ones that are going to change our campuses, you are the ones that are going to lead to lawsuits if there are problems. We are here to help defend you and we have your back. I encourage all of you to go out there and fight the good fight. Katie absolutely. [applause] chandler, the thing about education is there are adults here, older adults and College Students, they are making decisions legislatively for College Campuses. Elections are very important. How do you get College Students involved in elections that have affects on what they get to do . We have to bridge the gap between why elections are important and how it will impact young people on campus. There is a gap there that we need to use our ideas to bridge that gap. This party in this country was founded on the competition of ideas. The free marketplace of ideas. That is important. We do not want to impose costs on the American Workforce and the American People. I think that is only part of the ressure. Washington likes the measure. They like to say, we have taken off x billions of dollars in burden, and that is really important to measure and that is easy to measure. But here is the question that i would ask all of you. What is the cost in terms of liberty . That is a lot harder talk about because that is qualitative. Ou need to make judgments. It has to be a very careful conversation. When youre talking to individuals, one of the best things you can do is ask them questions and get them to realize freedom is a beautiful thing. Ask them hey, are you making more money now . Ey, do you enjoy being able to speak . Do you appreciate freedom of speech. Youre not going to them saying hey, with your big hat. I have one. When youre talking to these individuals, you want to plant the seed of liberty into their minds. You can get them to join organizations like many of them. A lot of them for sure. Just to follow up on that, youre still a student. You have peers. Im fascinated about that you were a student body president. So are a lot of people. It is very difficult to get into that. It is a monoply of liberal thoughts. Any student thinking of running, what advice do you have for them . Absolutely do it. It is short answer. A lot of the professors are just punkses at the end of the day. They are not teaching anything. Hey are moral cowards. Really, the question that i have, how do we, almost everybody on this panel, how do we operate in an environment where they dont value reason . I dont have the perfect answer for that. One answer i do have that i think well start chipping away at, is getting strong student leaders elected in the Student Government position. Im living proof that it works. Also work with our governors across the country to get more solid students appointed to the riegets board. They are the ones making policies day in and day out. They have the ability to fire faculty. Money in a lot of places. When we are operating in an environment that doesnt have any sort of value on reason. We need to figure out what the left has been doing so long, take their tactics. Taken over the administration. Fight back. 100 . I think it is so important that we have conservative College Students running for these positions just like marcus here. You control millions of student fees and dollars that you pay with your college tuition. That is so important. Being the guide of those student fees and hopefully lowering them as much as possible so that college is more affordable. Every time they have a liberal student president , they say we could use another dollar. Two more dollars. We only have five minutes left. The majority of young people claim they prefer socialism over capitalism. When you get into the details of what that means, they are actually against pift how do you combat that narrative to show them that the free market works and adults who are donating to college ace cross the country want to know how they can help. How can they help each of you to further your caust cause . Grant . Right at that point, we have a project called the gap redistribution project. Every spring, every spring we encourage our chapter chairs to create a video and ask students well, would you like to take your a and redistribute part of that and give it to the students earning all cs . You guys know what the answer is. That is how students are learning the value of Free Enterprise. We would love to have every single one of your supports. If you are not a student, it is so important to encourage any young person you know to get involved. It is also important to support us any way. You can go to our website and help out. Right now we still have a legal battle against the university of alifornia, berkeley. Which we are currently suing. I think we need to reject the premise that what the left is putting out there. We should be a party that is for a solution that will make the lives of American People better in the future. As soon as we start that fight on campus, it is so crucial to winning future elections. Absolutely. Put simply, your alma mater does not need your money unless you went to hillsdale. We should go after the money that is disallowing them to have any semblens of competition and make no mistake. Every organization up here had 1 of the money that conservatives give give to the problem every year. Which is higher education. Do not give money to higher education. They are going to put that money directly to the destruction of western civilization unless it is hillsdale, growth city or one of the clen of the south. Dont give money to the schools. Give it to the solution, not the problem. Absolutely. Ill keep it quick. I think a lot of times professors teach whatever their viewpoint is. A lot of times it is pro socialism as if it is the only truth. I challenge the students to stand up to those cowards who and speak truth. Talk about the pros of capitalism, you might have some repercussions, but there are a lot of resources out there. Turning point you as a is turning point usa is a your final word . Absolutely. I think it is one of the best things we are doing now is the Leadership Institutes normandy coalition, which is a group comprised of many in this room and on this stage. They are taking offense of strategies to college texas. In 2017, we hosted 862 conservative and libertyminded students on 350 campuses because we know if liberal professors and School Administrations will not spread the message, we will. Ms. Pavlich gentlemen, thank you very much. Ave an awesome cpac. [applause] ben shapiro is the editor and chief of the daily wire. E spoke at the cpac conference