Turning Point USA must not be accepted as a club by Student Government. For a club to be admitted, it must adhere to college policy; Turning Point USA’s mission inherently violates anti-discrimination and freedom of expression policies and poses a risk to Lafayette College as a whole.
First, Lafayette College bans discrimination, including the creation of a hostile environment. Turning Point USA has been identified as promoting homophobic, transphobic and racist rhetoric, and is thus discriminatory in nature; Media Matters for America has a list of relevant incidents in “A short history of Turning Point USA’s racism.”
Additionally, the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center both categorized Turning Point USA as a hate group. The Anti-Defamation League was cited as a source for the rejection of a Students for Justice for Palestine chapter at Lafayette, so jurisprudence demands a consistent rejection.
Turning Point USA is also observably deserving of classification as a hate group. Turning Point has several problematic elements, including but not limited to: endorsement of Great Replacement Theory both within higher members of the organization and by founder Charlie Kirk, several cases of inviting and endorsing known white nationalists and several cases of unpunished public racist behavior on behalf of college chapter heads. These should serve as ample evidence.
The risks of Turning Point are many: the hostile environment to students; the intrinsic harassment element of the Professor Watchlist and the general concerns to Lafayette College’s image. The Professor Watchlist allows students to report teachers for “Leftist Propaganda,” or biased grading, which disrespects Lafayette College’s grievance procedure and threatens all faculty.
There are several recorded cases of the Professor Watchlist sparking action, as in 2025 at the University of Oklahoma, where Turning Point USA national led a campaign against an Oklahoma instructor. The School Board Watchlist serves a similar purpose, and Club America, the high school offshoot of the association, cites itself as fostering “anti-woke warriors.” These are facilities within Turning Point, not separate from them, and should be treated as inherently approved or denied alongside Turning Point.
Freedom of expression must be preserved. Turning Point USA inherently promotes an intolerance incompatible with freedom of expression and fosters a culture of harassment. The mere presence of the Professor Watchlist within Turning Point USA disincentivizes members of Lafayette College from freely voicing their opinions for fear of being added to the watchlist and subsequently being harassed by the national Turning Point USA organization.
This Turning Point USA chapter already has a concerning track record, one example being chapter president Noah Hajdu’s words in The Lafayette’s April 17 article. His response to queer or trans students who would be concerned by Turning Point’s presence is that “God says, ‘I will love oneself as thy neighbor.’ And I still love you, but just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I hate you.” This response appears as though Hajdu views queerness as sinful, but a sinfulness that can be overlooked.
Student Government has both the reason and ability to reject Turning Point USA as a club. I am calling on this body not to recognize Turning Point as a club.
Matthew Simpson IV ’27 is a philosophy major and government law minor. He can be reached at [email protected].
R Marshall Austin MD, Class of 1971 • Apr 30, 2026 at 9:49 pm
(Luke 17:26-30) 26) And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man. 27) They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28) Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; 29) but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. 30) Even so will it be when the Son of Man is revealed.
William Neil • Apr 25, 2026 at 9:19 am
Well written, and this is a tough call. Maybe I lean towards allowing them, Turning Point, and if the premises of Mr. Simpson IV are correct, the actions of the club and its members will stir an appropriate reaction.
Two thoughts from my undergraduate days, 1968-1972, a time of high national tensions over the war and Nixon’s election.
I had taken a Russian history course, and I listened attentively as the course approached the actual unfolding of the Russian Revolution in 1917. I was disappointed by the casualness of the Professor, William Cox, a popular teacher with counter-culture overtones. He downplayed the event, being more interested in Russian culture than the crude and cruel political faction which emerged on top. But I suspect there was more to the casualness, which is that in the US, that Revolution, and most of the others, except our own of course, were frought topics. And the Cold War was not over.
So I sat in on another presentation on the same topic, same professor because there were so many people taking the course it had been broken into two section. Sensing Bill’s alarm, I told him that I was not there to monitor him but to listen carefully to what he thought about such a major event, because it seemed to me so much Russian history was a sweep up to the event, and what the middle of road Russian scholar Orlando Figes proclaimed in his very good book: “A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924.” And that’s the way I’ve come to see the event now more than a half-century after the course.
On the same theme, I still recall the candid statement by Professor Albert Gendebien, who tought European Intellectual History, that the Cold War had a very chilling effect on faculty and what they felt they could day in the classrooms. And if you know both what Rush Limbaugh and Trump have to say about the Left, they make no distinctions with their “vermin” branding: they’re all fit for the exterminator: liberals, social democrats, democratic socialists, communists…as if people on the left had not fought and died for the very real distinctions between the types.
And then there was William F. Buckley’s commencement address in May of 1972 – which no one has been able to find a copy of, even Buckley’s place in the Yale archives, despite my very recent efforts. Many of us protested and felt Charles Reich of the Greening of America would have been closer to the way we felt, and also associated with Yale. Instead, we got the usual thorough if strained Buckley case for a business Career as also a form of Idealism…I think that today, in light of the current President, it’s much harder to make that case, and already, before Buckley spoke, future Sup. Court Justice Powell had written his memo calling on business to reassert its power over society, and William E. Simon would deliver his own two-fisted version in “A Time for Truth.”
I think any formal type of monitoring faculty is a bad idea, and likely to continue the long standing problem of Lafayette as an Institution: it just doesn’t take intellectual risks, it is the safe place where parents invest in their offsprings pre-professional careers, and they’re not going to hear any sustained ideas that might lead to pioneering intellectual efforts, which our business heavy culture surely needs.
Which is why during my first two years, some of the brightest and most creative students left – Steve Shecter, wherever you are, who wrote a great article for the Lafayette criticizing “mixers” (when women were brought to campus in buses) under the title: “Lust, us?”
Chris Wain • May 4, 2026 at 12:11 am
Hi William–great commentary. I had vaguely recalled reading about Buckley’s commencement address, but could only recall a bit of what was written. Happily, Lafayette comes through where Yale couldn’t. The summer 1972 edition of Lafayette Alumnus has the full text of the address. A great many of the references (Oakeshott, Cheever, Chambers, even Updike) would have gone over my head (as well as many of the people in the audience. I can’t insert a link, but you can navigate to it in the magazine archives.
Chris Wain ’73
Noah Hajdu • Apr 24, 2026 at 11:01 am
Glad you could get this off your chest Matthew!
Bruce adams • Apr 24, 2026 at 10:17 am
You kids are ignorant. College made you that way.