More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history. The violations of academic freedom, free speech and due process on campuses in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination have been extraordinary and indefensible.

The campus firings are too numerous to describe in full, but consider the case of Darren Michael, professor of theater at Austin Peay State University, who was fired because he reposted on social media a 2023 Newsweek headline: “Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth It to Keep 2nd Amendment.” Tennessee’s U.S. senator Marsha Blackburn reposted Michael’s view on X, asking the university to take action.

Austin Peay administrators declared, “A faculty member of Austin Peay State University reshared a post on social media that was insensitive, disrespectful and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death. Such actions do not align with Austin Peay’s commitment to mutual respect and human dignity. The university deems these actions unacceptable and has terminated the faculty member.”

This is an utterly appalling excuse to punish anyone, and certainly not an adequate reason for a university to terminate a professor without any due process. There is absolutely no rule at Austin Peay banning people from being insensitive or disrespectful, since any rule like that would clearly violate the First Amendment. And the idea that posting a headline quoting Kirk’s views would somehow justify his murder is insane. It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize anyone for favoring or opposing gun control. This critique of Kirk is anything but pro-murder.

The violations of due process involved in these arbitrary firings, with no opportunity for a hearing or a defense, are terrible in themselves. But the justifications for the firings are so insubstantial that they cannot merit any kind of penalty, let alone an immediate dismissal.

It is perfectly legitimate to criticize and even insult both the dead and the living. Any conservative who thinks Charlie Kirk hated free speech so much that he would want his critics purged from campuses is making a far worse insult against Kirk than what any offensive leftist has written or said.

Of course, the suppression of free speech goes far beyond academia.

The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel by ABC on Sept. 17 following FCC chair Brendan Carr’s demands for his removal and threats against broadcast licenses represent an alarming repression of free speech, with the combination of corporate censorship and government suppression.

On his Sept. 15 show, Kimmel said, “We had some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.” What Kimmel said was, in fact, technically true: Conservatives were doing everything they could to claim that Kirk’s murderer was not one of them. And the murderer was, in fact, a white male college dropout from a Republican family in Utah that taught him to shoot and provided him with guns.

Of course, conservatives are probably correct to call the murderer a leftist with political motives, and if Kimmel was trying to invoke theories that the killer was actually a right-winger, that seems unlikely now based on evidence released after Kimmel’s show aired. But even if Kimmel was trying to make a dubious claim that has now been discredited, that’s protected by the First Amendment and principles of free speech.

The second part of Kimmel’s claim—that conservatives were using Kirk’s murder to “score political points”—was never in doubt and has been proven yet again by his removal from the airwaves.

Kimmel didn’t celebrate any violence or say anything bad about Charlie Kirk. The glorification of Kirk is a cover for an authoritarian agenda to suppress political enemies. Donald Trump immediately celebrated Kimmel’s banishment and called for NBC hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers to also be fired.

This is the slippery slope of censorship: First they come for those who celebrate murder, then they come for anyone who questions the hagiography of the victim, then they go after anyone who quotes the victim’s own words, then they silence anyone who objects to the repression itself. This is why even offensive and stupid comments about Charlie Kirk must not be punished.

But when Vice President JD Vance urges everyone to “call their employer” in response to offensive comments, that’s not critique or argument: That’s cancel culture, pure and simple. That’s government-mandated repression.

The right to free expression must include the right to say horrible and evil things. It protects all of the conservatives (including Donald Trump, his son and Charlie Kirk) who joked about the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi. It protects the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, who urged mass executions of homeless people.

As David Letterman noted about Kimmel, “You can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful or trying to suck up to an authoritarian criminal administration in the Oval Office.”

Less than two years ago, before he began issuing government commands to silence the media, Carr posted on X, “Free speech is the counterweight—it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.”

We are living in the authoritarian’s dream, and it’s a nightmare for free speech and democracy.