On Tuesday, the New College of Florida announced plans to commission a statue of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and organizer who was shot dead last week in Utah.
“Today, we announced that we will commission a statue of Charlie Kirk to honor his legacy and incredible work after his tragic assassination last week,” the institution said in a statement on X. “The statue, privately funded by community leaders, will stand on campus as a commitment by New College to defend and fight for free speech and civil discourse in American life. The location for the statue will be announced in the coming months.”
New College is a public liberal arts school in Sarasota, Florida. Founded as a private institution in 1964, it became an autonomous college within Florida’s state university system in 2001. In 2023 the college—long known for its progressive reputation—became the target of Governor Ron DeSantis’s plan to overhaul the school’s board of trustees and transform it into what the New York Times described as a “beacon of conservatism.”
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DeSantis removed six of the college’s 13 trustees in a month, replacing them with conservative allies. At the time, DeSantis’s chief of staff James Uthmeier said the plan was to make the school “Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South,” referencing the conservative Christian school in Michigan.
A Trump ally, Kirk promoted staunch far-right positions: he was anti-abortion and anti-immigration, and opposed LGBTQIA+ rights. He also referenced and propagated the “great replacement” theory, a debunked white nationalist conspiracy theory. He was popular among a segment of America’s young, male demographic thanks in large part to the campus conservative movement he spread through his organization, Turning Point USA. He embarked on college tours, inviting students to debate him. His confrontational, performative debating style often translated into viral social media moments.
The proposed design of his statue depicts him seated at a table with two empty chairs, speaking into a microphone and gesturing toward an imagined audience—perhaps inviting students to debate him in perpetuity.
This is not the first public memorial to Kirk. On September 10, the day Kirk was shot and killed, President Donald Trump ordered flags flown at half-staff at the White House, on public buildings and grounds, at military stations and vessels, and at all US embassies and consulates abroad until September 14.
No word yet on whether Kirk will be included in Trump’s proposed National Garden of Heroes, a controversial public sculpture project announced in July and slated to feature life-size statues of “250 great individuals from America’s past.”