The Charlie Kirk Show - Charlie Kirk vs. ASU
Aired: 2023-11-30
Duration: 35:24


=== Arizona State University Crisis (10:18) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, Tan the Charlie Kirk Show and our discussion about higher education, Arizona State University with Austin Smith and Ann Atkinson.
[00:00:06]  This is a test case of how awful higher education has become.
[00:00:10]  You got to listen to the details, especially if you live in Arizona.
[00:00:14]  Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:17]  Get involved with Turning Point USA and go to Amfest.
[00:00:21]  That's amfest.com, A-M-F-E-S-T.com.
[00:00:24]  Tucker Carlson, Patrick Bett David, Candace Owens, Glenn Beck, Rob Schneider, Roseanne Barr, Dennis Prager, Allie Bestucci, Jonathan Isaac, James O'Keefe, Riley Gaines, Ben Carson, Michael Anton, Jason Whitlock, Gad Sad, Brandon Tatum, Seth Dillon, Jack Pesobic, Benny Johnson.
[00:00:40]  We also have Avek Ramaswamy and Steve Bannon, amfest.com.
[00:00:44]  Get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com.
[00:00:47]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:48]  Here we go.
[00:00:49]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:51]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:53]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:56]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:00]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:01]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:02]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
[00:01:09]  Turning point USA.
[00:01:10]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:19]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:22]  Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
[00:01:31]  Okay, everybody, there's been some fun stuff happening in the great state of Arizona, place I call home.
[00:01:36]  Austin Smith is with us.
[00:01:37]  Austin, say hi.
[00:01:38]  Hey, Charlie.
[00:01:39]  Are you the youngest member of the house?
[00:01:40]  Is that I am the youngest member of the house, and I am one of the three youngest Republicans ever elected to the Arizona House.
[00:01:46]  Ever elected.
[00:01:48]  And Turning Point USA alum, elected.
[00:01:50]  TPSA alum, do some stuff with Turning Point Action, state rep. And you've kind of made a pet project of yours is our fun little, let's say, focus on Arizona State University.
[00:02:04]  It's been fun, I got to say.
[00:02:05]  It has been a lot of fun.
[00:02:07]  And when you spent several years working in the nonprofit section of higher education, the higher ed cartel is what we like to call it.
[00:02:14]  And then you get to the legislature and you find out how bad the higher ed cartel actually is, like a greedy piglet that just keeps coming back for more money without any accountability.
[00:02:25]  So it's time we put a stop to that and we're going to talk more about it.
[00:02:28]  So by background, and by the way, we have Ann with us.
[00:02:31]  Is Anne on?
[00:02:32]  Hi, Anne.
[00:02:32]  How are you?
[00:02:33]  The great Ann Atkinson.
[00:02:35]  I need to introduce Ann Atkinson.
[00:02:37]  And so we're excited to kind of chat with you guys both.
[00:02:41]  So let's just tell the story.
[00:02:42]  Actually, you know what would be helpful?
[00:02:44]  Ann, why don't you tell the story?
[00:02:46]  Because it was bubbling up well before this event.
[00:02:52]  February was really the crescendo, and there's been subsequent, let's just say, chapters of this story.
[00:02:59]  Ann, remind our audience of this story.
[00:03:03]  Well, in February of this year, I, as the executive director of what was the Lewis Center, invited you and Dennis Prager and Robert Kiyosaki to speak to students at Arizona State.
[00:03:15]  And the faculty of the Honors College threw a fit.
[00:03:18]  They launched a national condemnation campaign.
[00:03:21]  They went into their classrooms and they told freshman students, do not attend Charlie and Dennis's event.
[00:03:28]  This is an event for white supremacists.
[00:03:31]  And then these professors stood outside the entrance to our program on health, wealth, and happiness with signs that said no hate at Barrett, 10 feet from all of the students entering to see exactly which of their students were entering the event.
[00:03:46]  The deans ordered, the deans at the Honors College ordered for your marketing to be removed because it offended the faculty.
[00:03:54]  The deans then told me what you and Dennis and Robert were and were not allowed to say.
[00:04:00]  And Charlie, I have to tell you, they said higher education for you was off limits.
[00:04:05]  You couldn't talk about anything that could be politically divisive or that may alienate the audience.
[00:04:10]  And this, of course, blew up into a viral national story.
[00:04:14]  A lot has happened since, but you did come and you spoke, and you were wonderfully brilliant.
[00:04:19]  So thank you.
[00:04:20]  Thank you.
[00:04:21]  And I talked about the Sabbath, the radical idea of working for six days and resting for one.
[00:04:27]  So this then, and you lost your job and they fired you, and you wrote a Wall Street Journal piece that is so powerful.
[00:04:36]  I paid for free speech at Arizona State.
[00:04:39]  Talk about that.
[00:04:40]  Yes, you know, most people in higher education are there for their careers, and even the good ones, and there are a lot of good people in higher ed, they won't speak up.
[00:04:50]  They won't speak out because if they speak against the orthodoxy and against the will of a college leadership, they get reprimanded or fired like me.
[00:05:00]  And like the events director at ASU Gammage, who was the other person that put on our event, she also got fired.
[00:05:06]  Oh, and the dean at Barrett dismantled the entire Lewis Center that was serving all the Barrett students.
[00:05:13]  So I think this story at ASU is really a microcosm of what's happening across the country.
[00:05:19]  But the public expected better of Arizona State.
[00:05:22]  ASU has been saying for too long how great they are for free speech, how they welcome all viewpoints.
[00:05:28]  But we've seen through many examples, a big one is your event.
[00:05:32]  That's not the case.
[00:05:34]  And so then the summer comes, and then we do another event this fall where I call for the defunding of Arizona State University.
[00:05:41]  You spoke at that, Austin, and we kept the drumbeat going.
[00:05:45]  And then the atrocities occurred in Israel and there was a pro-Hamas rally.
[00:05:51]  How did Michael Crowe respond to the terrorist sympathizers at ASU?
[00:05:55]  Well, if you've been paying attention to this story and it's been developing months over months, ASU is like their own worst enemy in this situation because one, they attack conservative organizations, conservative students for presence on campus, but actual terrorists, a pat on the back, turn the other cheek, just look the other way.
[00:06:14]  There's not an actual problem here.
[00:06:15]  And so you got individuals like Michael Crowe and the Board of Regents who are supposed to be equal and respect all students on these college campuses.
[00:06:23]  And they don't.
[00:06:24]  There's no accountability to them.
[00:06:25]  They come back to the legislature every single year asking for one-time monies and spending for millions of dollars for some project with no accountability and no oversight.
[00:06:34]  But I'm supposed to believe that they're using it effectively and they're actually having a level playing field for college students when they are going to condemn Turning Point USA, but not the Students for Justice in Palestine for actually trying to disrupt a student government meeting, an anti-Semitic movement at Arizona State University.
[00:06:54]  This has got to stop.
[00:06:55]  This is going to end.
[00:06:55]  And so it's time for we completely gut Arizona State University from getting taxpayer dollars.
[00:07:01]  There's no more room for it anymore.
[00:07:02]  They make $4.4 billion a year in revenue.
[00:07:05]  The taxpayers do not need to give another dime to Michael Crowe and the Board of Regents.
[00:07:10]  Yeah, so let's walk through that.
[00:07:11]  And I mean, you know the university structure very well.
[00:07:16]  There's an immense amount of diversity, equity, inclusion bureaucrats now at ASU.
[00:07:22]  They have refused to prioritize the pro-American, pro-freedom, pro-liberty type ideas at the university.
[00:07:34]  And they're now very worried.
[00:07:36]  The legislature is seriously considering these cuts as they should.
[00:07:41]  And do you think that there's room for cuts at Arizona State University?
[00:07:45]  There's so much waste.
[00:07:46]  And absolutely is the answer to that.
[00:07:49]  There's so much waste.
[00:07:51]  Classes and organizations within the university are being used to teach students not just to hate America, but to distinguish between oppressors and the oppressed and to try to be a victim.
[00:08:03]  So, ASU is not preparing these students for the real world.
[00:08:07]  They're spending our taxpayer dollars in an incredible number of examples to teach these students to really be miserable.
[00:08:15]  And what happened to teaching them to pursue the American dream, to pursue knowledge and truth, and to love our flawed, but love our greatest country in the history of the world.
[00:08:24]  They're not doing it.
[00:08:26]  There are room for cuts.
[00:08:27]  There is room for cuts.
[00:08:28]  Yeah, and the first place I would cut is the 39 professors that came out that said that Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk shouldn't be allowed on campus.
[00:08:38]  And I want to make sure we talk about these two.
[00:08:40]  The free speech is a major issue at ASU.
[00:08:43]  But Austin, there's an ideological toxin that they are replicating that should not be subsidized.
[00:08:51]  They have an endowment.
[00:08:52]  They have plenty of money.
[00:08:54]  Why should they receive even a dollar of taxpayer funding?
[00:08:57]  Well, it brings up this whole purpose of like, why does the Board of Regents even exist?
[00:09:01]  When the legislature and the state of Arizona make laws, the Regents are responsible for enforcing those laws.
[00:09:07]  And one of the laws in the state of Arizona is that all ideas are treated frequently.
[00:09:11]  We actually have a more robust First Amendment in the Arizona Constitution than the United States Constitution.
[00:09:17]  But when you start having these professors spew this ideological hate against white people, the West, Christianity, we got to ban Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager from being on campus.
[00:09:28]  And then you have the university president sign a letter essentially condemning Turning Point USA, which is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that is allowed to be on that campus.
[00:09:39]  When that president, when Michael Crowe sends the lobbyists down to the legislature saying they need more money for a certain project or a certain cool, yeah, they send their team of lobbyists down there to ask for more money.
[00:09:50]  When I was like, why would we give you a dime when you continually punish other people that are not ideologically brainwashed, like you that are Marxist social justice warriors, for last, and what I said was that they offer classes for lesbian underwater basket weaving, being facetious, but that's true.
[00:10:07]  They're offering students to do that.
[00:10:09]  Why do that?
[00:10:10]  One of these professors that condemned us is best known for his work called F. Kraken.

=== Barrett Honors and Coffee (05:36) ===

[00:10:18]  It's not a joke.
[00:10:19]  I'm going to, I'm going to, this is a real thing.
[00:10:21]  This is not scholarship.
[00:10:22]  This is not education.
[00:10:25]  It is, it is insane.
[00:10:29]  The world is in flames, and Bydonomics is a complete and total disaster.
[00:10:32]  But it won't ruin my day.
[00:10:33]  And that's because I start my day with a hot America first cup of blackout coffee.
[00:10:36]  Now, I've been trying to trim how much coffee I have, but when I have coffee, it's blackout coffee.
[00:10:41]  This coffee is 100% America and 0% Grift.
[00:10:44]  Blackout Coffee is 100% committed to conservative values from sourcing the beans to the roasting process, customer support, and shipping.
[00:10:50]  They embody true American values and accept no compromise on taste or quality.
[00:10:53]  By the way, I was traveling recently and somebody brought me a cup of coffee and it tasted really bad.
[00:10:59]  It was really bad.
[00:11:00]  I said, where's my blackout?
[00:11:01]  And they said, we didn't bring the blackout on this trip.
[00:11:03]  And I was really disappointed.
[00:11:04]  It was a tough day.
[00:11:05]  When you get used to blackout coffee, you know what I mean.
[00:11:07]  Go to blackoutcoffee.com/slash Charlie.
[00:11:09]  Use coupon code Charlie for 20% off your first order.
[00:11:12]  By the way, it's kind of coffee season, isn't it?
[00:11:14]  It gets dark around like 3:30.
[00:11:16]  It's cloudy.
[00:11:18]  It's not exactly the most uplifting weather.
[00:11:20]  You kind of need to pick me up sometimes around 2 p.m.
[00:11:22]  Go to blackoutcoffee.com/slash Charlie.
[00:11:23]  Be awake, not woke.
[00:11:24]  That is blackoutcoffee.com slash Charlie.
[00:11:26]  Promo code Charlie.
[00:11:27]  The taste is amazing.
[00:11:29]  It is smooth.
[00:11:31]  And people know that I need my cup of coffee in the morning.
[00:11:34]  Not too much, not over the top.
[00:11:36]  But if it's not blackout, then the mood is not so good.
[00:11:38]  Go south.
[00:11:39]  Go to blackoutcoffee.com/slash Charlie.
[00:11:41]  Great company.
[00:11:42]  Blackoutcoffee.com slash Charlie.
[00:11:44]  Promo code Charlie.
[00:11:47]  So the professors get angry.
[00:11:49]  Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager are coming.
[00:11:51]  Do they get angry that on November 18th, hosted by the Barrett Honors College, white feminism meets Bergeria and black girl magic?
[00:12:00]  Look at this.
[00:12:01]  Witchcraft as radical healing.
[00:12:04]  That is brought to you by the Barrett Honors College.
[00:12:09]  Barrett Tempe official also hosted sexual politics.
[00:12:13]  Instructor Dr. Michael Austeling.
[00:12:16]  Somebody watch out for that guy.
[00:12:19]  And so let me get this straight.
[00:12:21]  The Barrett Honors College is cool with witchcraft as radical healing, but not Dennis Prager or Charlie Kirk, evidently.
[00:12:29]  These are not extreme, you know, uncommon examples.
[00:12:33]  Witchcraft is magical healing.
[00:12:35]  I mean, you walk into the dean's office at Barrett, the Honors College, they have an entire glass display case dedicated to witchcraft, fairies, demons, the intersection of witchcraft and Christendom.
[00:12:47]  I mean, this is, it's not like this is a course that's uncommon.
[00:12:53]  I mean, even the professor that lunged at your cameraman, I mean, he has a disclaimer in his syllabus, Dr. David Broyles, that they will be having vivid discussions and depictions of teenage sexuality and sexual violence.
[00:13:08]  This has become the culture, and ASU leadership has allowed it to turn into a cancer within the university.
[00:13:16]  I want to just re-emphasize this.
[00:13:18]  So, Austin, do you have a thought on this before I get to the next step?
[00:13:20]  Yeah, look, this is a rot.
[00:13:23]  Obviously, in our higher education, Charlie and I have been doing this for several years now in higher education.
[00:13:27]  It's a rot.
[00:13:28]  It's left the college campuses, the universities.
[00:13:30]  Now it's in the military.
[00:13:32]  It has infected every single part of daily American life.
[00:13:35]  And for taxpayers like Ann Charlie and I, who are conservatives, who really disagree with that type of messaging on public taxpayer-funded universities, there has to be an answer to that, and it's cutting off the funding.
[00:13:48]  It's like you're not getting a dime.
[00:13:50]  You can put up whatever you want in your stupid office about fairies and having sex with a kraken, but we're not funding it.
[00:13:54]  It stops now.
[00:13:56]  So, this is the Honors College ASU.
[00:13:58]  They say, oh, there's nowhere to cut.
[00:14:00]  Okay, how about fire this guy?
[00:14:01]  Dagmar Van Engen, a non-binary person whose current project argues that transness is central to queer and feminist science, an author of How to F a Kraken.
[00:14:13]  What does that even mean?
[00:14:14]  No, these are sick people.
[00:14:15]  This is what your taxpayer dollars are underwriting.
[00:14:17]  This next one: Lisa Barca, whose area, this is our professor's area of expertise includes feminism and gender studies, and recent research uses an eco-feminist approach to the intersections of speciesism.
[00:14:29]  Or Alex Young, a scholar of the transnational settler colonialism, or David Agris, who has done research in gender and sexuality studies and recently filed a lawsuit against Montana State University because he said they fired him because he's gay.
[00:14:44]  I'm sure they fired you for other reasons.
[00:14:46]  Joseph O'Neill, who recently led a seminar on whitewashing of ancient Greece and Rome.
[00:14:52]  Rachel, these are all professors, Fedbach, whose research interests include feminist ethics, black feminism, abortion, gender, and race.
[00:14:59]  And my favorite, the Rebecca Sorris, an editor of the female fantastic gendering the supernatural in the 1890s and 1920s.
[00:15:08]  This is what Arizona taxpayers are underwriting.
[00:15:11]  No, it's ridiculous.
[00:15:12]  And so there was an article that came out, a column earlier this week about this committee that we had regarding the classes that ASU offers.
[00:15:21]  And it was a lynching of our higher education.
[00:15:24]  I'm like, if this is what higher education at Arizona State, supposed to be the Harvard of the West, is offering our students, yeah, we need to reevaluate what kind of classes that taxpayers are offering students to turn out these next generation of radical leftists.
[00:15:39]  So Anne, you were going to say something.
[00:15:41]  Yeah, thank you.
[00:15:43]  I think it's important your listeners understand, too, these aren't adoptional courses.
[00:15:48]  Barrett Honors College students are required to take six credit hours from these professors that you're listing.

=== NAD Energy Secret Weapon (02:32) ===

[00:15:54]  There's no choice.
[00:15:55]  That is the first step as a Barrett Honor student.
[00:15:57]  I had to do it over 20 years ago when I showed up as a Barrett student.
[00:16:01]  You have to take the human event with the Barrett professors.
[00:16:04]  And then beyond this, there are ways that the radical activists have infiltrated even great classes.
[00:16:11]  So when I ran the Lewis Center, I reviewed all the syllabi.
[00:16:15]  And in one class called Personal Finance and Life Skills, somebody who has now been promoted to an assistant dean with the entire university included homework assignments for how to defund the police and the case for slavery reparations.
[00:16:30]  So if a student wanted to take a class on personal finance, they are still getting this radical ideology shoved down their throats, whether they want it or not.
[00:16:42]  Strong Cell is amazing.
[00:16:44]  I got to tell you, the combination of NADH, CoQ10, and collagen is really something.
[00:16:49]  You know, people ask me, they say, Charlie, how do you keep your energy up?
[00:16:52]  How do you just keep on pushing?
[00:16:54]  Look, part of it is diet nutrition, but I'll be honest, I take supplements really seriously.
[00:17:00]  Fact-check me on this.
[00:17:01]  You can say, oh, Charlie, I'm going to fact-check you.
[00:17:02]  Type this into your search engine: NADH.
[00:17:07]  Just type it in.
[00:17:08]  What does it tell you?
[00:17:09]  It might tell you that it is the secret to living long, anti-aging properties, more energy.
[00:17:14]  All of that is being proven in more and more clinical trials.
[00:17:17]  NADH is a precursor so that your mitochondria can remain healthy and vibrant.
[00:17:23]  The elites, a lot of billionaires, people with a lot of money, they spend a ton of money on NAD.
[00:17:27]  It's a fact.
[00:17:28]  NAD just might be your secret weapon for more energy.
[00:17:31]  I take NAD every single day.
[00:17:34]  I could tell you that NADH compared with CoQ10, the trials show very, very good things on it.
[00:17:39]  Don't take my word for it.
[00:17:40]  I mean, honestly, my word should be good for something, but fact-check me.
[00:17:44]  Look at it.
[00:17:45]  And if you do it over 30 days, you'll see an increase in energy.
[00:17:47]  I wake up better than ever before.
[00:17:49]  NAD can help you potentially, again, fact-check me on this with depression, anxiety, other issues that you might be dealing with.
[00:17:56]  It is nature's gift to you so that you might have extra energy and mental clarity.
[00:18:02]  You guys can use promo code Charlie for 20% off.
[00:18:04]  It's strongcell.com/slash Charlie.
[00:18:07]  NAD might be nature's secret weapon for you.
[00:18:12]  I love it.
[00:18:12]  I take it every single day.
[00:18:14]  Try to try it for at least 30 days to see the maximum benefit.
[00:18:18]  And let me know: has NAD helped your life?
[00:18:20]  Strongcell.com/slash Charlie.
[00:18:22]  Check it out.
[00:18:22]  Strongsell.com/slash Charlie.

=== Rising Tuition and Radical Faculty (09:26) ===

[00:18:27]  Okay, I want to play this tape here, Ann, and then have you react to it.
[00:18:30]  Before I do, Anne, do you want to introduce it, just kind of tease out the circumstances of all this, and then we'll play the tape?
[00:18:36]  Yes, this is the Barrett Vice Dean, Kristen Herman, speaking in a meeting with me and the Dean, Tara Williams.
[00:18:44]  And ASU has said over and over: they did not say what you were and were not allowed to say.
[00:18:50]  They did not censor speech.
[00:18:52]  And things went sideways.
[00:18:54]  I understood the deans didn't like you.
[00:18:56]  They didn't like Prager.
[00:18:57]  So I started recording.
[00:18:58]  I recorded a lot.
[00:19:00]  And this is just one of the recordings of Barrett Vice Dean, Kristen Herman, saying exactly what ASU has been publicly denying for months.
[00:19:08]  Publicly denying, and they wanted to censor my remarks.
[00:19:12]  PlayCut 91, please.
[00:19:14]  What I want to know, Anne, because it's really for you as the executive director, that their conversation is about health, wealth, and happiness, as you've suggested it will be, and not about higher education or anything that could be deemed as political or turned into a political platform.
[00:19:43]  That we're not leveraging any of those conversations to make political statements that are going to alienate our audiences.
[00:19:54]  And that's some pretty powerful stuff.
[00:19:56]  Has this been aired before?
[00:19:58]  This aired on the Seth Liebson show just on Monday, but to a local audience, this has never been aired to a national audience.
[00:20:07]  So, you know, I've released the transcript of this to ASU publicly.
[00:20:12]  And, you know, I guess people just have to hear it in the voice of an ASU dean that, look, you did try to limit what Charlie and Dennis and Robert could or could not say.
[00:20:22]  I'm wondering, do they give these parameters to Ibram Kendi when he comes to campus when the Clinton Foundation got paid, as we learned in the hearing on Monday, half a million dollars for Hillary Clinton to speak at ASU?
[00:20:35]  Did ASU give her parameters for what speech was and was not acceptable?
[00:20:41]  There are two standards at ASU.
[00:20:43]  Evidently.
[00:20:44]  So, Austin, you hear this.
[00:20:46]  Not only is ASU lying, but they're in full retreat mode.
[00:20:49]  You could tell Michael Crowe and the PR crisis team there, they planted these stories yesterday, which I think is hilarious.
[00:20:54]  Arizona Republic, one after the other.
[00:20:56]  Republicans called to gut ASU funding over free speech is Twilight Zone level crazy.
[00:21:04]  Two things.
[00:21:05]  The clip that was just played earlier in the year when we had our free speech committee, Anne was there testifying.
[00:21:11]  And she said those words verbatim, what the dean told her.
[00:21:14]  Do not let Charlie or Prager or Kiyosaki bring up anything political.
[00:21:19]  And I said, does the dean think that you're a mind reader, Anne, that you're going to prevent somebody from speaking about health, wealth, and happiness?
[00:21:27]  I should have brought up political.
[00:21:28]  And I'm like, the reason why they say that, don't let them talk about anything political because health, wealth, and happiness are inherently good human conservative values that they despise.
[00:21:39]  And so second thing here, ASU is in full retreat.
[00:21:42]  We've got them on the ropes.
[00:21:43]  You got people like Michael Crowe who wrote a book this year about, you know, any politician that doesn't support all these climate change policies or idiots and morons.
[00:21:51]  I'm like, that's the culture at Arizona State University.
[00:21:54]  That's what they truly believe in people who are not brainwashed, moronic Marxists like them.
[00:22:00]  And so now you've got them sending out their, because the media does a great job in Arizona playing cover for the Democrats and the higher universities, and we're done with it.
[00:22:09]  And next legislative session, ASU should be very weary during the budget process.
[00:22:14]  It's coming up right now, right?
[00:22:15]  I mean, you guys have.
[00:22:16]  We'll go back into session in January.
[00:22:18]  And we got to get the budget.
[00:22:19]  That's the most important job as legislators.
[00:22:21]  And there is an appetite, Charlie, what you're talking about for this, that we can't just keep saying, because conservatives for the longest time have run into situations or been approached by people like Ann that we've got to do a better job of protecting free speech on college campuses.
[00:22:33]  Well, the rubber has met the road now.
[00:22:35]  People demand answers.
[00:22:36]  They deserve accountability.
[00:22:37]  People like Ann and Lynn Blake deserve accountability, and so do the taxpayers of the state of Arizona.
[00:22:42]  So yeah, ASU is on the meat grinding row right now.
[00:22:47]  So Ann, what does a in-state Arizona student pay at ASU now?
[00:22:52]  What is an in-state student pay-ish?
[00:22:54]  Oh, $18,000 plus, plus, plus.
[00:22:56]  So you're $25,000 easy all in.
[00:22:59]  And out of state is like ridiculous, right?
[00:23:02]  60, 70, ridiculous.
[00:23:04]  Yeah, 60, 70.
[00:23:06]  Hence, ASU's push to have more international students.
[00:23:09]  They're trying to appeal to be a university of the world to attract more high-paying international students.
[00:23:16]  That's why ASU has partnerships with the Chinese Communist Party, with different countries all over the world.
[00:23:22]  That's why they're trying to have learners that are not degree seeking, but that they're trying to have that top dollar tuition come into the university.
[00:23:33]  Yeah, so it is, and I'm going to ask some things off the top of your head.
[00:23:37]  Can you just kind of help me understand the finances?
[00:23:39]  So there's a $1.25 billion endowment.
[00:23:42]  That's a big number.
[00:23:43]  I'm sure some of it's land and some of it's restricted gifts.
[00:23:46]  And there's like a four billion dollar budget.
[00:23:48]  Is that right, Austin?
[00:23:49]  The whole place costs $4 billion to run?
[00:23:51]  That doesn't sound right.
[00:23:53]  There's no way.
[00:23:54]  Well, I mean, part of it too, though, Charlie, is that every single year, up until about COVID, tuition consistently rose at Arizona State University.
[00:24:02]  And in the Arizona Constitution, it says that public universities' tuition should be low to as free as possible.
[00:24:10]  And that's not the case anymore.
[00:24:12]  It continually rises, rises, and rises.
[00:24:14]  The regents raise tuition because they just become a rubber stamp for places like Arizona State University that Ann was talking about that attract international students to raise tuition.
[00:24:24]  It's just a cash rack.
[00:24:25]  It's just a racket and there's no accountability for it.
[00:24:27]  So, and they said they fired you because Tom Lewis pulled his money after the controversy around the event.
[00:24:34]  Is that true?
[00:24:36]  And do you have any evidence of left-wing people that have lost their job recently?
[00:24:41]  No, you know, it's a lie.
[00:24:43]  It's not true.
[00:24:44]  I even offered new diversified donor funding, and the Barrett dean wouldn't have the conversation.
[00:24:49]  The provost of the university knows this.
[00:24:51]  We had the conversation, and she didn't even say, let's find a place for the Lewis Center to continue.
[00:24:57]  The Lewis Center and its values, which were about traditional American values, hard work, personal responsibility, those are not welcome at ASU today.
[00:25:08]  So it was not true that I was let go just because Tom Lewis pulled his funding for this grant agreement.
[00:25:14]  Here's the proof.
[00:25:15]  Part of it, well, one of the pieces of proof.
[00:25:17]  Tom Lewis was funding multiple positions, and everybody else, all the faculty members of the Lewis Center that were also 50% grant funded, kept their jobs.
[00:25:28]  But I was the, you know, the one to go for the reason of the, you know, Tom's polling of grant funding.
[00:25:34]  It's not true.
[00:25:35]  It's not the case, but ASU stands behind that because it's easy to say.
[00:25:40]  So the Honors College, which they say feels and functions like a small college within a large research university, is supposed to be the standard of excellence, right?
[00:25:51]  They brag that it's the best of both worlds, that you get this kind of intimate environment, but you still get all of the benefits of Arizona State University.
[00:26:04]  Can you just reinforce for our audience that is this the place of the pursuit of academic excellence or more and more ideological workshopping of a radical agenda?
[00:26:18]  Is this a place where students are reading the great books and being immersed in Western values and getting their money's worth, quite honestly?
[00:26:29]  Or is it something that is closer towards trying to create more angry activists to deploy into the world?
[00:26:35]  Well, it has the framework to be great.
[00:26:37]  When I was a Barrett student, we read Plato and Socrates and Dante's Inferno.
[00:26:42]  I mean, we read the classics and it was a small, like a small liberal arts college within a big university.
[00:26:49]  It was beautiful.
[00:26:50]  But what happened is the same issue throughout ASU.
[00:26:54]  They've hired radical members into their faculty.
[00:26:57]  Faculty have academic freedom to teach whatever they want in their classrooms.
[00:27:02]  And they've, if you hire people that really want to teach witchcraft, guess what's going to come into the classroom?
[00:27:07]  So, you know, Barrett had a great dean for the last 20 years, Dean Mark Jacobs, who believed in the balance of all of these things.
[00:27:15]  And maybe he had, you know, some radical faculty, but he kept the overall big picture balance.
[00:27:20]  But Barrett has a new dean who's not demonstrated any leadership.
[00:27:24]  She's an administrator, Dean Tara Williams, and the radical faculty have run rampant.
[00:27:29]  You know, Michael Crowe was offered a $50,000 bonus a year ago to make Barrett and W.P. Carey and Ira Fulton global brands, individually global brands.
[00:27:38]  And I would say he's failing miserably with Barrett.
[00:27:41]  It's very sad as an alumna to see what it has become, knowing what it could have been.
[00:27:47]  I want to zero in on this for a second because ASU, to an untrained eye, has become a model.

=== Fixable Campus Leadership (07:30) ===

[00:27:54]  People think it's this wonderful place.
[00:27:56]  You know, Starbucks employees get like, I don't know, a free ASU course or something, right?
[00:28:01]  Austin?
[00:28:02]  Yeah.
[00:28:02]  It's something like that, online course at ASU.
[00:28:05]  But in the pursuit of expansion, Crow has obviously grown the university, but has also introduced radical ideological elements, some of the worst left-wing impulses imaginable.
[00:28:18]  And it doesn't function Austin as a university as much as it does as almost an increasingly woke tech company with tens of thousands of customers that live on campus.
[00:28:30]  That's what it feels like.
[00:28:31]  It doesn't feel like a college.
[00:28:32]  Well, Michael Crowe believes that he's like Elon Musk of Arizona when he's more closely to like Elizabeth Warren with what he believes in and what he tries to bring to Arizona State University.
[00:28:41]  And something that I just recently found out, that ASU was ranked number one above like Michigan State, Penn State, and MIT for global impact in advancing the United Nations sustainable development goals.
[00:28:54]  What does that have to do with producing the next generation of great Arizona leaders?
[00:28:59]  And they're getting exposed to classes about witchcraft and having intercourse with the Kraken.
[00:29:04]  None of that prepares us to take on countries like China.
[00:29:08]  And Michael Crowe is leading the charge in the downfall of a great state like Arizona.
[00:29:14]  Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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[00:30:17]  So, Anne, what can be done to fix this?
[00:30:20]  Is it fixable?
[00:30:21]  Is the Leviathan too embedded?
[00:30:25]  Is it just better for donors to direct their money to other schools, other causes?
[00:30:29]  Is it culturally fixable?
[00:30:32]  Not just Arizona State University, just higher education in general.
[00:30:34]  You know, what we've seen in this process is they won't hold themselves accountable.
[00:30:39]  Even leaders from whom we expected much, they will not hold themselves accountable.
[00:30:44]  We need to see external pressure.
[00:30:47]  We need to support our legislators like Representative Smith here, like our committee chairman, Senator Anthony Kern, Representative Kwan Wen, people that have been leading this effort.
[00:30:58]  We need to support those in office that can do something from the outside.
[00:31:02]  And you know what?
[00:31:03]  Parents, students, you need to wake up to what's happening.
[00:31:06]  Look at the courses that you're seeing on the show today.
[00:31:09]  This is the reality.
[00:31:10]  I would not send my kids to public education today.
[00:31:14]  Thankfully, they're young, but there is a lot of work to be done.
[00:31:18]  I don't know if it's fixable given the main issue or it's the people.
[00:31:23]  Students come and go.
[00:31:25]  You know, university leadership comes and goes, but these faculty are there for their careers.
[00:31:30]  And we've been infected with these radicals that are around.
[00:31:34]  So I think it takes an all-out effort from every external angle.
[00:31:39]  And even then, it might not be enough to fix it, but certainly we can make some difference.
[00:31:44]  Austin, it's giving me some hope that they fear the cuts.
[00:31:50]  They're sending lobbyists.
[00:31:51]  They're doing their PR campaign.
[00:31:53]  The pressure is on.
[00:31:56]  Walk us through what can be done to fix this, at least partially.
[00:31:59]  Well, higher ed administrators are something I like to call the pork lobby or the pork caucus, and they only understand money.
[00:32:07]  And you've got to hit them where it hurts.
[00:32:08]  And we talk, Tarli talks about it all the time, and I kind of stole it from him at this committee this week, is that mom and dad, you're playing Russian roulette with your kids' future when you send them to public universities.
[00:32:17]  Donors, your values are not being representative maybe at that college that you love or that formed you into the great person that you are today.
[00:32:24]  Those aren't the same places anymore.
[00:32:26]  Redirect your funds to an institution, to a place, to an organization, to a university that values what you believe in.
[00:32:33]  Legislators in Arizona and across America, stop pork caucus rolling these universities that are giving us the next generation of little communists.
[00:32:43]  We can't have that anymore.
[00:32:45]  And until we course correct here, it'll take at least a generation to two generations and a half for these universities to finally fall back to be a place that's actually inclusive to all thoughts and ideas.
[00:32:57]  But until then, don't go to public university.
[00:33:00]  And it's just, I'm going through the Baird Honor College now, and it's trash.
[00:33:05]  There's no redeemable value to learn how to F a Kraken.
[00:33:09]  Okay, that's not worth going into debt for.
[00:33:11]  It's not worth paying.
[00:33:13]  You guys want to do that on your nights and weekends on some sort of website?
[00:33:17]  Okay, whatever.
[00:33:18]  It's really strange.
[00:33:18]  Not a university.
[00:33:19]  And I don't get the impression.
[00:33:22]  Has Michael Crowe ever had to answer for what these professors are teaching?
[00:33:27]  And he's like, oh, it's just academic freedom.
[00:33:29]  No, no, no, you're responsible for, as the president of university, whether or not these students are leaving better prepared, wiser, better understanding of the world ahead of them.
[00:33:42]  And final thoughts.
[00:33:43]  President Crowe won't touch the faculty.
[00:33:46]  When these classes were intimidating students about you, President Crowe said, that's just faculty being faculty.
[00:33:54]  When they're teaching these radical classes, he said they have the right.
[00:33:57]  It's academic freedom.
[00:33:58]  We have all sorts of different professors.
[00:34:00]  He won't touch the faculty, and the faculty have taken over.
[00:34:03]  So I think, you know, parents locally, look at places like Grand Canyon University.
[00:34:08]  Look at other places because public universities are in a pickle right now.
[00:34:12]  And Representative Smith, you have the power to work with your colleagues to maybe all syllabi should be available publicly so that students and parents can see what they're buying before they buy it.
[00:34:24]  They can see the curriculum vités for those faculty that write books on effing krakens.
[00:34:29]  They should be able to have that transparency.
[00:34:31]  So there are a lot of things you have the power to do.
[00:34:33]  I'm here to support you.
[00:34:35]  And there's a huge swell of people behind this movement for some improvement in education.
[00:34:40]  I think I have a new builder on next session.
[00:34:42]  Yeah.
[00:34:43]  Defund the F Kraken.
[00:34:45]  Yeah.
[00:34:45]  Well, I love this because Dagmar, who is the author of the F Kraken book, is still the author.
[00:34:51]  They took down on the website that Dagmar is the author of F a Kraken.
[00:34:56]  That tells me that they, that Dennis talking about it, us talking about it.
[00:35:01]  Yes, they're a little ashamed when people realize that at Arizona State University, you pay to learn how to have sex with a Kraken.
[00:35:09]  Thank you guys so much, Austin and Ann.
[00:35:10]  Wonderful school ASU has become.
[00:35:12]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody, get your tickets to AmericaFest today, AmFest.com.
[00:35:20]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.