Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet told Fox News Digital on Monday that the Trump administration needs to “pull every lever at its disposal” to overhaul higher education.
“I think the administration should pull every lever at its disposal to make sure that colleges and universities are living up to the ideal that college needs to be a collision of ideas. It needs to be a place where you’re challenged in your way of thinking. And orthodoxies need to be challenged,” Kolvet said.
The Trump administration announced last week that it identified civil discourse as one of four areas of national need through its competitive grants program.
The other areas of national need include expanding the use of artificial intelligence, “building capacity for high-quality short-term programs,” and encouraging accreditation reform.
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The Department of Education (ED) unveiled seven priorities under their Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) for the FY 2025 competition, which are intended to support those national needs.
There will be $60 million in grants distributed under “one absolute priority,” according to the ED, which includes “Promoting Civil Discourse on College and University Campuses.”
Colleges that qualify for the FIPSE competition have supported “initiatives to foster respectful deliberation and debate on college and university campuses, where free expression has too long been eroded by censorship, harassment, and even violent unrest.”
Such initiatives include “seminars, speaker series, conferences, debates, and other learning opportunities that include a range of viewpoints and encourage dialogue.”
Turning Point, the conservative advocacy organization co-founded by Charlie Kirk, is aligned with the administration’s higher education goals.
“The academy itself has been completely captured by liberal, we call it woke ideologies, and in order to challenge those orthodoxies, in order to create actual viewpoint diversity on these college campuses, it’s going to take both a carrot and a stick,” Kolvet said, applauding the incentive the Trump administration is providing for higher education institutions.
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Kolvet said that TPUSA historically faced issues with the University of California system as they pushed to install chapters in every high school and college in the country.
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Kolvet’s comments came after violence and chaos erupted near UC Berkeley last week while TPUSA was conducting an event, “This Is The Turning Point,” featuring author Frank Turek and actor Rob Schneider.
Left-wing agitators swarmed Zellerbach Hall, where the event was held. A man was seen in a viral video assaulting a TPUSA supporter near the campus and was later arrested, according to local police.
“When you see what happened with UC Berkeley… yeah, the stick is, ‘Hey, listen, if you don’t do a good job of protecting students at a peaceful event to go hear from Rob Schneider and Frank Turek, there’s going to be a stick involved, and we’re going to launch an investigation, and we’re going to see if the university was complicit or even perhaps cooperative with agitators and with rioters,'” Kolvet said.
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UC Berkeley released a statement to Fox News Digital emphasizing a commitment to free expression and safety.
“Our university is committed to an open and robust marketplace of ideas and to maintaining a campus where people of all beliefs and perspectives can feel safe and respected,” Chancellor Rich Lyons told Fox News Digital.
“UC Berkeley is committed to continuing to host speakers and events representing a variety of viewpoints in a safe and respectful manner. We will continue to evaluate our policies and practices to ensure that open dialogue and the rule of law continue to be upheld on our campus.”
