Charlie Kirk + Q&A / Debate | Cambridge Union

0:00 [Music] [Applause] Hi everyone and thank you for joining us tonight. Our speaker tonight is Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative commentator. He's founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, which has a presence on over 3,000 high school and college

0:45 campuses. It is the largest and fastest growing youth activist organization in USA and he's written four books. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Great to be here. Brilliant. So I'll start with some questions from me and then we're going to move to the questions from the audience from the people who've submitted them and you'll be asking them at the dispatch box. My first question is about Turning Point USA's professor watch list. Its mission is described as exposing college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom with examples including feminism, abortion, and socialism. How would you respond to critics such as Pen America who see it as supporting what it claims to deride, which is the intimidation and ostracization of those who express

1:32 controversial views on campus. Well, we're getting right into it, aren't we? Uh, thank you. So yeah, just by background, um, Turning Point USA has now grown to be the largest campus conservative organization in the country. I come from a view that conservatism is widely underrepresented in American campuses. And by conservatism, I literally mean the defense of Western values, free markets, rule of law, individual initiative, entrepreneurship, um, the constitution, so on and so forth. and in American college campuses in particular. And I don't know. I'm guessing that this campus is I don't even want to guess. We'll see what happens when we have dialogue. But I I I do know that there are some great professors that do teach the Western cannon, which is far too missing from American universities. Is

2:17 that college American college campuses have become a place where they strive to have everyone look different but think the same. And in America, you know, university and college tuition is through the roof. And students and parents have a moral obligation to know who is teaching their kids. And for these professors that have such a major objection for being on our professor watch list, if they don't say obscene things, then they will not end up on our watch list. I'm talking about professors that were excited about what happened on October 7th. I'm sorry. If you're excited about what happened on October 7th, then you deserve to be on a professor watch list and people should know all about you. And if people want to fire you as a consequence of that, or if people don't want to go to that school as a consequence of that, uh, then so be it. And so what was the criticism exactly? I it was um that the

3:04 Welch list supports what it claims to deride which is the intimidation and ostracization. Oh yeah. I mean sorry. Thank you. If the publicizing of certain ideas is intimidation then I think that's just laughable. It is using our own free speech to expose professors who we believe is making are making America a worse country. And in fact I believe in America higher education has largely posed a threat to Western values. And I think we need more students and more parents to realize the moral rot that universities have become in the western world. So Turning Point Academy mentions the importance of promoting intellectual growth. How would you respond to critics that such an education system stifles intellectual growth through establishing a fixed set of values, for example, regarding God, life beginning at conception, and two genders rather than

3:51 promoting intellectual diversity? Sure. I mean at some point you're going to have to get to a truth claim. So even to say that you want intellectual diversity means that you think in intellectual diversity matters but by what standard? So you have to actually at some point say that something is good. So if someone says well the criticism that you're going to tell a kid that something is good something else you should have intellectual adversity. Okay. Why? By what standard? By what book? By what scholar? By what author? By what worldview? We believe as a organization that the west is the best for many certain for many reasons in particular my own personal views. I'm a Christian. I'm not ashamed of it. And Christianity brought to the world things that we all take for granted. Tom Holland who actually was educated here and is one of the great classicists and taught himself ancient Greek. He wrote

4:37 in his book Dominion that even if you hate Christianity, your critique of Christianity is actually using Christianity itself. And so this idea of intellectual diversity, I totally support that. And I think that students should read different books and should read different authors. At some point though, the purpose of education is not to have an endless buffet line for students to sample every bad idea in the world. It's to point them to the good, the true, and the beautiful. And I think we've lost what the purpose education is. Education in Latin literally means to lead forth. To lead forth out of the cave was the original analogy. And so at Turning Point Academy, we take the biblical idea to train a child up in the ways in which they will go. And we make no apologies for instituting a belief that believing is in God is better than secularism. The defense of universal

5:22 human equality is a good for all humanity amongst many of the other things that you articulated. So, um, how would you reconcile the importance of freedom, which is listed as Turning Point USA's mission on your website, with the restrictions on bodily autonomy, which you support, including abortion, transaffirming healthcare, and birth control? And how would you respond to criticism of your limited view of freedom? Sure. So, first of all, birth control I don't have that strong of views of. So, I mean, except for the fact that I've criticized how actually young people that take young women that take hormonal birth control might have side effects that are not always disclosed to them. As far as abortion and transaffirming care, I'll get in that in a second, but I find it laughable. Not from you, of course, but some of the people that are always very critical of Charlie, why don't you just

6:08 believe in bodily autonomy? I'm sorry. Didn't you just mandate a vaccine for the last couple years? I couldn't visit your country for 2 years cuz I didn't take a vaccine. So, it's my body, my choice, unless it's so it's my body, my choice if it's another human being in the womb. But it's not my body, my choice. If I want to take a vaccine that was neither safe nor effective, and we all must be very honest about the fact that the public health experts of both of our countries never apologize for the fact that they made you take a vaccine that, by the way, has a lot of side effects for a lot of people in this room. And no one wants to say that. As a side note, though, all the all the bodily autonomy people, and you guys can laugh all you want, it's fine. Um, all the bodily autonomy people suddenly got really silent when we decided to say, "We're going to control your body and control the movement of what you can do. You can't go to the pub. You can't go to the local gathering of friends. You can't go to university. You can't even

6:54 go into the UK if you don't have a a a card." So, that's a fun contradiction for me. At at the same time, there's a difference between freedom or liberty and license. Liberty is the pursuit of things that allow human beings to flourish at its highest possible potential. License is not those things. So on the first thing, you do not have a ability and I'm sure there will be a question about this under any agreed upon western morality which is derived from a Christian construct to murder another human being. You do not have that freedom. And so we believe obviously because we believe in very basic biology and science that life begins at conception and therefore that life deserves universal human rights as derided as applied equally under our laws. As far as transaffirming care, as far as if you want to do something over the 18 age of 18, knock yourself out.

7:40 You guys actually have been better than our country on this. You have the Cass report that our country has lost its mind where the Cass report itself issued an opinion based on my limited but somewhat understanding of it that transaffirming care for children is highly questionable at best. And so we all can agree that students that are not or young people that are not yet of age or mature age of 18, of course we limit certain freedoms or licens liberties for seven 15 year olds. In my country, they can't own guns till they're 18. Uh in my country, they can't even drink till they're 21. Um in my country, you you they can't vote until they're 18 in America. And so until someone is of age, you're going to limit that. And so I believe that we should all agree that young people in particular, 15, 16, 17,

8:26 there should be a prohibition that you should not be able to cut off your breasts or go under lifealtering, irreversible, gender affirming care just because you might be going through a temporary phase. So you spoke about vaccines and the COVID 19 vaccine. How would you respond to accusations about you misusing your platform and purporting misinformation during the CO9 pandemic, including speaking against the COVID vaccine and speculating about deaths caused by it and being briefly banned from Twitter for claiming that hydrochloroquin hydroxychloroquin, sorry, hydroxychloroquin was 100% effective in treating the virus. Well, I'm back on Twitter now, thankfully. New ownership. [Music] Um, I I I appreciate the question. Has anyone asked our public health leaders that question? Will they apologize for

9:12 everything they got wrong? The lockdowns were completely unnecessary. They should never have happened. And the young people of the West lost proms, graduation, whatever equivalent you have here in the UK for no good reason whatsoever. And you guys can laugh all you want, but let's look at the data. Suicide rates of young people in the West went up after CO. There's speech delays. There's a misery problem. And we locked down the the the generation of people that needed to be locked down the least that have now beared the consequences the most on top of a hyperinflation crisis which caused a housing crisis which has caused a sovereign death crisis. All for what? Because we were worried that something that materially was never a greater threat than the seasonal flu to these people in this room was a it was never a greater threat than the seasonal flu. That is a fact of science because we

9:59 have to trust the science. And again, we can go back and forth, but this is the more important thing. It was never about trusting the science. It was about trusting the scientists that confirmed this view. There was something called the Bington Declaration. If you don't know what this is, all of you have a moral obligation to know what it is. The Bington Declaration was thousands of scientists from around the world that said these lockdowns are doing more harm than good. And the one thing that we never talked about through all this that now the pharma companies magically discovered after they were able to proliferate a vaccine is early interventions. is the fact that if you catch COVID early, what is your vitamin D level? Let's have a serious conversation about whether or not you're chronically overweight. In my country, we are a fat country. We're good at a lot of things. We're also really good at gaining weight. Why didn't we also say to the American people and be honest, if you are 50 pounds overweight, you have a much higher likelihood of dying of

10:45 COVID. That would be be considered to be politically insensitive in America. So, how do I respond to clinic critics? Honestly, I'm proud of the work that we did during COVID. I opposed the lockdowns from the beginning. We talked about early interventions. We platform people that were right all along and meanwhile the people that got the most important public policy questions of our time wrong have never felt any sort of criticism. They've never actually faced justice and I think we of the people of the West deserve an apology from our leaders for all the suffering that they inflicted on the young people of both our countries. So you've described recently how it used to be 10 vaccines, now it's 72 shots for our babies. Something's not right and our kids are sicker than ever. How would you describe to crit how would you respond to criticism that your rhetoric regarding vaccinations is dangerous and

11:31 irresponsible when considering a global rise in vaccine distrust and deaths from vaccinereventable diseases including measles and menitis? Well, first of all it number one you can use your own agency and you can get nine co shots if you want. I'm not preventing that. I think though that a robust conversation needs to happen that inoculations have risen across America. I'll just talk about America. I know this for certain. um inoculation and vaccine rates have risen and chronic diseases are higher than ever and there is a perplexing rise in a lot of the secondary and third tier issues. Of course, I'm provaccine. If you want to get vaccines, we should do it prudently. We should do it appropriately. We should do it smartly. But in the same way, we should also simultaneously respect medical freedom and religious conscience. The I I I the criticism is this. I I I'm not a

12:17 scientist and I don't play one on TV, but I also I use human reason and one would say common sense to also ask the very simple question, the public health authorities got almost every major problem of co almost major every question of CO wrong. Why should we continue to delegate trust to them? Trust is earned. It is not given. And so, yeah, look, I'm I'm sure someone's going to ask a question or two about that. That's fine. I'm by no means a quote unquote expert on all that. But let me also question this. the experts, they have to now, number one, you have to apologize when you get something really wrong. And I think you have to get back into the into the public square and prove to us why we should trust you when, for example, in my country, I'm not sure if it was for for you guys, we had this thing of six feet to slow the spread. Anthony Fouchy just made it up. The data shows that he just arbitrarily

13:03 made it up. There is not a single public health reason why we had six feet to slow the spread. Locking down schools, actually what made CO worse and delayed the inevitable spread. The only country in Europe that I think was a model was Sweden. They kept schools open. They kept restaurants open. They leaned into her immunity and generally their statistics were way better than some of the other countries that were correlated to it. So, everyone has the agency to do what they want to see fit. And yes, I do think that there is something troubling when the childhood vaccination schedule goes from 10 shots to 72 shots. Some of which are things for example hepatitis B upon birth in America I don't know how it is in the UK within seconds they will inoculate a child against hepatitis B number one hepatitis B vaccine expires by the age of 13 and there's only two ways to get hepatitis B through sexual intercourse or through introvenous drugs

13:49 or some other correlated way so unless it is a son or a daughter of a active drug user or a drug mom mom mom totally get it which you can test for in uterero the argument for hepatitis B vaccine within seconds of a baby being born is I questionable at best. And so those of us that even asked the question, why are we using a hepatitis B vaccine when we could maybe wait till they're 12 or 13 and when they're sexually active? No, you must do it and you must just trust the science. Okay. Well, that is um that's not good enough for us. So, Turning Point USA acquired students for Trump in 2019 and worked on targeting students on college campuses, especially ahead of the 2020 election. However, despite an increase in youth turnout in 2020, Trump support was worse with young people in several battleground states

14:36 than 2016. How would you respond to critics who claim that this failure was partly due to Trump outsourc outsourcing youth outreach to Turning Point USA? How did he do this last election? Um, well, I mean, his support was better in youth, but it was still lower with the like lower amongst youth than it than the Democrat support was. We won the youth vote in the state of Michigan and we ran basically the entire youth operation in 2024. In fact, it doesn't anyone can look on chat GPT Grock or Google. I mean, whatever you want. Like we crushed the youth vote. Even Democrats acknowledge it. There's story after story after story. Why are young people moving so far to the right? And so, will you give me credit for that? I mean, why do you think that like in several key states, even in 2024, amongst the young we did anywhere

15:21 between 10 to 25 points better in the key battleground states? This is not just conjecture. It is material fact. Both young men and young women move to the right dramatically. In America, young people are Donald Trump's most loyal cohort, not even baby boomers. According to the Yale Youth Poll and the Harvard Youth Poll, Donald Trump has actually made the most gains amongst younger voters. And I guess maybe something we did had something to do with that. And what do you see as the future of conservatism amongst young people? I think it's going to be the dominant, God willing, dominant worldview amongst young people in America. And it's ascendant. I again what we are seeing in states and I don't know if it's the case here in the UK, young men in particular on pace to be the most conservative generation in history. And it's an exciting trend and we're leaning into

16:07 it. Uh we see this in the macro trends. We also see this micro young women are following suit. Uh there's kind of two Gen Z's. There Gen Z that was basically out of college or near end of college at COVID and then there was Gen Z that was in high school. What would the equivalent term be in high school? Whatever you call Yeah. Yeah. Um and they had their lives obliterated. Those are the most formative times of their life. 15, 16, 17, 18. They were forced to wear masks. They had to do school through Zoom. They saw friends that uh many of whom that took their life. our suicide rates went up exponentially. And also on top of that, we had this insane race stuff in America during 2020, otherwise known as Floyd Palooa, where we decided to burn our country because a guy drug overdose on the streets of Minneapolis. And the um that's true. He

16:53 did he did drug overdose, not just my opinion. Just read the medical examiner report. Um the Henipin County Medical Examiner report. And so then all of a sudden, we decided to like commit cultural suicide and throw statues. By the way, in London, they like threw a statue into the river or something because we're systemically racist. I'm sorry. Our two countries are the two least racist countries ever to exist in the history of the world. And and you guys should also be thanking the Lord that you have someone like William Wilburforce to look up to. And you should be building statues to Wilburforce, not taking down statues of your history, because it's thanks to Western values that we abolish slavery. And the world is a profoundly better place because of that worldview. And we as conservatives are unafraid to tell that story and that truth. So you've condemned the Civil Rights Act of 1964

17:38 as a huge mistake. Correct. Why do you believe it was a mistake to pass anti-discrimination legislation? And what do you think would be better policy for being treated fairly and equally, which you see as an American principle? Yeah. Nothing against the intent, but it was too broadly written and it played into something called disperate impact. Desperate impact was woven within the Civil Rights Act. and desperate impact basically says if two racial groups have different outcomes the answer must be racism. It does not allow any legal nuance. So there are four components to quote unquote the anti-racist regime of America. I don't pretend to know what goes on in this country. I could just talk about America is that I'm sure that's fine. And it's four components. Affirmative action, critical race theory, DEI, and disperate impact. Those are the kind of the four components. All of them have their subsection. The Civil Rights Act led the way to affirmative

18:24 action, which is weaponized quote unquote reverse racism against Asian and white people. And the Civil Rights Act also blazed the trail for disperate impact as a legal theory. Basically saying that if black Americans are doing worse in a group, it might not be be because of marital differences or cultural differences or single motherhood issues. It must be racism. And so because of that, the Civil Rights Act was too broadly written. It's now being applied in my country as a way to get rid of voter integrity, to get rid of election integrity, to get rid of voter ID. Civil Rights Act is also now being applied to put men in female locker rooms. So the intent, it should have been a single page or a two-page bill to say that you cannot discriminate against based on the color of somebody's skin. Period. End of story. Instead, we get a multiple hundpage bill with lots of chapters and lots of lesserk known amendments that created basically a

19:11 permanent anti-racist bureaucracy within our federal government to go find racism where it doesn't exist and create it new places where otherwise did not exist. So, you've described Martin Luther King Jr. as awful, not a good person. Even though many conservative commentators have spoken in support of what he says, including his um quote where they will be judged about his children, where they will be not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content character. He was right there. So, does his speech and his general ethos not then agree with your views on No, I've complimented him as well, but I mean, first of all, he was a personally morally flawed man. And to be fair, a lot of people I sometimes look up to are morally flawed. But also, I mean, we all we're all morally flawed. We're all sinners. I would hope we actually many of you probably don't believe in God, so never mind. Um, so the look, Martin

19:58 Luther King in a lot of different ways had a promise of a colorblind America. I don't want to go too deep into this cuz I don't know how maybe it's very interesting to UK students about MLK, but there is a myth there is a mythology around MLK that does not warrant the reverence that he gets treated with in America. Should he be mentioned amongst lots of people in the 20th century that was complicated and at the end of his life advocated for a more communistic view and then actually got away from race blindness and actually got towards race obsession. I'm totally cool with that. He did some great things. He did some things that were not so great. In America though, you must understand he has looked to as the new founding father. The main contention that I have with the Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights Movement and how it ended, not how it started, is that we refounded the country fundamentally. We cast aside our founding roots and our founding documents, the US Constitution, and we decided to b basically usher in the

20:44 Civil Rights Act as a new anti-racist dogma creed. And I I find something fundamentally wrong with that. Our birth certificate as Americans is the declaration and the law of the land is tied with the US Constitution. It was not the Civil Rights Act. And so with all of that to say, we have a national holiday to MLK. We got rid of a national holiday for our own our first president and our founding father, George Washington. We used to call it Washington birthday. Now we call it uh President's Day in our country. So that's just maybe some context to answer that question. So you tweeted ahead of the January 6th capital attack that Turning Point USA and students for Trump were sending more than 80 buses of patriots to DC to fight for this president, although it ended up being seven. Do you see your

21:30 claims, including that the election was stolen, as contributing to January the 6th? It's somewhat of an irrelevant question, but no, of course not. In fact, our students were the ones that didn't even go to the capital and peacefully went home, but I mean, how deep into January 6th do you want to get? It wasn't an insurrection by any means whatsoever. There were some people that acted totally improperly and they should not assault police officers or break windows. But there were also a lot of people that walked into the Capitol building and the doors were open for them and they walked between the queued lines that were there and said a prayer. And these are the people that walked around with pocket constitutions and they were smeared in the largest witch hunt and manhunt, I should say, the largest manhunt in American law enforcement history that resulted in 1,300 arrests of nonviolent offenders that walked into the people's house in

22:16 the United States capital building while violent crime rose in almost every major city in the country. And so I I don't know how much maybe I'm sure there'll be a question on January 6. So you've compared same-sex sexual behavior to drug and alcohol use and described it as an error and said you don't agree with the lifestyle. How would you justify these comments whilst also speaking about welcoming gay people into the conservative movement? Well, first we all have flaws. That's number one. But number two, how do I justify? It doesn't matter what Charlie Kirk believes. That's a view derived from scripture. And so it's the Bible talks very clearly about God's natural order. We see this reflected in the natural law. Some of my closest friends and closest people that work with me alongside Turning Point USA u participate in a samesex lifestyle and

23:03 that's their own prerogative. But if you ask me what I believe and why I believe it, it's derived straight from scripture. And you've spoken of marriage as between one man and one woman, even whilst polls have consistently shown most Americans as in support of same-sex marriage. How would you respond to critics regarding your position on this? I don't derive my morality from up or down vote. How would you respond to criticism that far right-wing discourse, particularly online, is inflamed by organizations such as Turning Point USA and your rhetoric, even as you condemn attendance of neo-Nazis in at your events? I I don't even know how to respond to that. I mean, how do I respond to critics that I'm inflaming tensions? The if the truth inflames you, you have a

23:50 problem. It's not my problem. Um, what do you see as the role of an institution such as Turning Point USA in shaping national discourse and what do you think is next for the organization in terms of what you discuss? Yeah, I mean, look, we're very known for hopefully what we'll see here, which is respectful dialogue. We have an open mic on campuses. I did over a 100 hours of campus debates this semester, seen billions of times around the world. And yeah, look, as far as conservatism, we plan to win. And for the three conservatives that are here tonight, um, I hope you guys get your mojo back. This was once a great country. I want to see it great again. You guys are a husk of your former self. You guys, you can laugh and sneer all you want, but the country that split the

24:36 atom and invented the steam engine and eradicated slavery and brought common law to the world can do a lot better than this. And you are your existence led to our existence. And for what whatever I can do, I hope that this country um finds a leader or a group of leaders. I'm not here to give you political advice. I hate when foreigners do that to Americans. You guys, whatever you want. But I do have a wish that the world feels like it's missing something. It feels like it's missing something when Great Britain or or England or whatever politically correct thing I have to say because I guess England I can't fly an English flag now or whatever nonsense that is like be proud of your heritage. You've done good for the world. Stop apologizing. Get your energy. Get your vitality. Get what made England and made Great Britain such a phenomenal place. I

25:23 hope you get that back. And I hope that you reject the swan song of multiculturalism and get back to the fundamental truism that a strong Britain means a strong world and therefore a strong west and we can stand up for what is good, true and beautiful. Would you agree with commentators that your politics have become more conservative in recent years and what's caused this shift? Yes. Um partially honestly getting married and having children something that I hope all of you do. um getting married and having children is an objective good thing for yourself and for society um and for of course your children. Uh the fact that we are having less children in the west is a very alarming trend and as I got more conserv as I got you know as I got married and I started to have a couple kids I started

26:08 to realize this is what I'm fighting for and I understand the threats against their well-being and their livelihood. Um and then also I got more serious about my faith. So you've spoken today against affirmative action in educational institutions. How would you propose making excellence in education more equitable for students from disadvantaged backgrounds? Uh, IQ tests and do you see equal treatment as possible without considering just so we're clear IQ tests don't have anything to do with background? I mean meaning like okay if you have somewhat of an equal nutritional capacity doesn't matter how much you study or you get an IQ maybe get an IQ tutor and boost it by a couple points but we should bring back IQ tests in the west. Please continue. I was just going to say, do you see it as possible without considering any external factors for students when

26:54 applying for higher education such as economic background? Well, external factors can be factored in, but affirmative action isn't that. At least in America, I don't know how it works here. Affirmative action in America is so it was we struck it down at the Supreme Court, thankfully race-based, which is that a certain melanin content gets you certain points and a certain melanin content gets you the merits. Great. We're going to move now to Okay. Am I stand here? Yeah. Other discussion. Thank [Applause] you.

27:44 Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Can we settle down, please? So we're going to move on to our questions. Our first question is from Zanosa Zubar from Sydney, Sussex. Come up and ask a [Applause] question. Remember, you have the right of response. Um, I have quite a simple question for you now. I know you've debated Dean Withers on Jubilee before. I was wondering why you now refuse to engage with further debate with him. Wait, wait, hold on. First of all, he's coming on my show this summer. And let me get this straight. I flew 5,000 miles across the world to have you ask why I'm not going to debate a left-wing YouTuber. Well, I mean, he continuously tries to

28:30 get your attention at your campus. Yeah. And you just ignore him. I've debated him twice in the last calendar year. He's coming on my show this summer. Let me be clear. I came to Cambridge to have you ask me that. I mean, you talk about freedom. I'm just using my freedom of speech to ask you a simple question. You seem to be dodging it for some reason. No, I've I've debated him twice in the last year and he's coming on this summer for a long form discussion. But is is this what I can expect? Yeah, he's making videos about you avoiding him on your campus debates. Right. So, let me let me tell you how this works. I do a campus event like a Texas A&M University. I rent it out. I'm there for 3 hours. He shows up demanding to come up to the mic immediately cutting in line of other students. It's not Joe Biden's America

29:15 anymore. or we can just cut in line and get whatever you want. So therefore, I say, "Excuse me, Dean. We'll talk at another time." He makes this YouTube video as if I'm scared to debate him even though I debated him twice in the last year. Does that sufficiently answer your question? Yes, it does. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question is from James Love from Anglo Ruskin University. [Applause] Uh so firstly, thank you for coming here, Charlie. It's nice to meet you. Uh so my question is I am a conservative and I did back Trump in 2024, but I'm

30:01 troubled that the GOP refuses to hold him accountable for his personal and legal failings. And how can we claim to stand for moral values and the Constitution while excusing behavior of that we're condemned from the left? Isn't it the hypocrisy undermining our credibility, especially with the next generation? What What specifically do you have issue with? Well, countless things that he's done. Uh the what? Stormmy Daniels. Um you know, the bus interview uh that he put down to uh locker room talk, you know, his multiple legal values failing filings. And what would you like to see them do? And you voted for you voted for this man. So or No, I can't vote for him. Whatever. You said you voted or

30:46 whatever. I don't know. Plenty of Americans. I don't know. You said you supported him. So yeah. Uh is that correct? Maybe I'm putting No, you supported him. Okay. Yeah. No, I'm not saying that. I supported him on some of his policies and him. But a lot of conservatives, I'm not saying you personally, but a lot of conservatives refuse to call him out or critique him on anything and will ignore that straight away. I mean, I I I critique him. He's a friend of mine. I might critique them. I don't think Canada should be the 51st state. We have enough enough liberals in America. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. [Applause] Our next question is from Kai Beavenon at Trinity Hall.

31:38 Right. So, thank you for coming Charlie. My question to you, I mean, I'm a medical student and so I'm going to throw out the big a word. I know you get asked about it a lot, but I want to hear from you what your opinion is on abortion. Life begins at conception. Uh, but about abortion specifically, why why do you think abortion is wrong specifically? Well, you agree murder is wrong? I agree. Okay, so this this is where we get to the question, right? Because what what is it about murder you say is wrong? Like why is murder wrong? Well, because it's a human being. Not just because it has consciousness or because it's of a certain age. Because it's a human. Because it's a And what is it that gives human being this moral worth? Not its consciousness necessarily. I didn't I didn't say it's consciousness. I know. I'm I can imagine it's because it is a human being because that is a soul. And what what is this soul? Where

32:23 does this come from? This idea that it's exactly I mean again the Greeks postulated that it is the entirety of your being. Okay, you guys can laugh. I mean it's true. I mean every civilization has had a different belief but agreed upon ethical monotheism which is the creed of the west and what the birth certificate of my country articulates that every human being is more than just matter. It's more than just a clump of cells but it also has an invisible element to you that will live beyond you. Fine. So I mean can you say that comes from the Bible or where else do you get that ethical monotheism which is the creed of the west and again the declaration of independence mentions God four times. the the founders were explicitly believed not in a secular moral morality but a divinely given one of at least this idea that there is a god and you are not him and let me ask you what is the first stage of human development so the fir I mean this is

33:11 the thing right we can take it from the sperm being generated in the father and the usite being generated in the mother right they fuse at birth uh conception sorry the only thing that happens at conception is these two cells fuse right no DNA is created a zy is not created a DNA no that's not true the DNA The DNA coding at the Hold on. Climb out. Does a zygote have a unique marker? Charlie does. Does a zygote have a unique marker? You have to let me speak. You have answer it. Yes or no. Does a zygote have a unique marker? Define a unique marker. Meaning, can you differentiate the DNA coding between the mother and the zygote? If you examine it under a deoxyribboucleic acid analysis, can you only purely because the addition comes from the father. Oh, so it is something different. Charlie, Charlie, DNA is not created. DNA is not created. You have

33:58 the father has his own genome. The mother has her own genome. They fuse. This is why you have the same characteristics. Similar ones to your mother, similar ones to your father. That's why you have similar characteristics to your siblings. DNA is not created. Right? So when you ask me where does a human being come from? I can say to you it starts at conception. But all conception is these two cells joining. Right? But these two cells were created the mother cells were created long before she they were created when she was a fetus. So there's there's none of this DNA being produced, right? So we can't we can't establish at conception is these two se these two cells fuse. Now this idea that that means that for some reason suddenly that moral worth comes in but it wasn't there before when you had these two cells who had half the g the DNA but suddenly there's there's correct something magical happens at that. It's

34:43 not magical Charlie we know about this. Well, hold on. Hold on. Charlie. Charlie. Time out. Hold on. I promise you, I'm not trying to score points. I'm not trying to score points on you. This is We call it the miracle of life for a reason. We've not been able to yet replicate human life development outside of the womb. We call it the miracle of life because yes, it's something beautiful. The ability to form a new magical. It's not You say magical, is it? Oh, it's beautiful. It's a incredible thing that happens, of course. But it's not incredible in the sense we don't know what's going on. There's no new DNA being coming out of nowhere. Hold on. But time out. Is Isn't there a separate DNA though than the mother? Like Yes. From the father. Okay. Yes. But then Yes, but it's not the father's DNA either. A new coding is created. You are a blend of the two. And

35:30 that your So when did your life begin? Okay. So So when did your life I mean again this is this comes from what you define as where life started. You can say life starts at conception, but I'm telling you I believe that's just our book very point, right? That's just the moment these two cells fuse. Now you say about this mother thing. So the way the way DNA is arranged in a cell is it's arranged in chromosomes. Chromosomes are paired up. So you have one from the mother, one from the father typically in a healthy individual. Right? Now you can take those maternal chromosomes out and you can find that th this is who the person's mother is. And you can do the same with the father now. The reason you are different to your mother and father is because some of those chromosomes express genes that are different from each other. And so those genes interact and that's what gives rise to you. Right? But there's no there's no there's no space for any kind of moral framework

36:16 to come into that until you consider that a human being is capable of consciousness and of suffering. But unless you if you take that out of the equation, the fact that these two DNA, you know, whatever they molecules, right? These two DNA molecules are fusing, that does not suddenly flip a switch that attributes moral worth to that individual. I mean, I'm just saying I I'm not trying to score points. I'm trying to understand by what moral standard do you believe that? I believe that if if an individual is capable of suffering, then it's wrong. Now, can I can I explain my opinion on abortion? Just so you can understand, I I would agree as many reasonable people would that at 9 months

37:03 it like it's unreasonable to expect someone to get an abortion, right? Unless you have some extreme circumstances, but for an elective abortion seems a bit radical to me. But it also seems radical to say that a woman who has just, you know, the cells have just fused to deny her of an abortion also seems wrong to me because that that, you know, that zygote is not capable of suffering as far as we know. So you're by again by what moral standard is that just your opinion? Where did you get that moral standard from? Because suffering is a bad thing. We all know suffering is a bad thing. That's an objective fact, right? Hold on. Okay. So you do believe in objective morality? I believe that suffering is an objectively negative. So if you if you can't feel it, is it okay? What do you mean if you can't you can't feel the pain? Is it okay to inflict the pain? In in the sense that if no one's suffering from it, if you have a scenario where

37:49 nobody is suffering from something, then yes, of course. There there's no there's no a moral something is only a moral question if it affects someone's well-being. So let me just make sure I understand this correctly that if it doesn't affect their well-being. So dementia patients that don't know who they are or where they're from. Can we can we execute dementia patients because they're confused about their wellbeing? C can you can you imagine a scenario or Alzheimer's patient Alzheimer's patients don't really know much about anything. Can we schedule them for execution because they can't technically suffer? Now respond. So can you imagine a scenario where we lived in a society where we killed people when they they you know they underwent they suffered from dementia were unccapable of suffering and we killed them right that would not that does not is not a

38:34 scenario that involves an absence of suffering there's still suffering involved people's imagine you grow up thinking my dad could be killed at any moment because he's going to get dementia imagine living your life thinking I could get dementia and suddenly I'd be killed by my state imagine a world where you slaughter a million babies every year in America But Charlie, Charlie, it's not slaughter. That's the problem. What? Hold on. It's a forcible removal from the umbilical cord of an another human life. Again, we we have clarity but not agreement. Biologically, you know that your entire coding began at conception. Your coding or uniqueness I'm denying. I disagree with that. Okay. When those two cells fused together to yours to use your terminology, that is where the process accepted terminology. In the interest of time, can we bring this question to a close? process of human development objectively begins at that moment.

39:21 Therefore, those human beings are deserving of human rights. We keep going or do you want to No, thank you. That's Yeah, you can finish. The process of development begins from the moment the sperm is being generated in the father, the moment the eggs are being generated in the mother. To say that suddenly the moral worth switches on when they fuse doesn't make any sense. That's just a a point. It makes perfect sense because that that is when your journey as a human being. When the sperm and egg were separate, you were not yet a fused human being. You were not created uniquely. DNA existed in an image. Your DNA existed. I thought well no the no the parts of your DNA existed. Your DNA did not exist. It's like saying that we have a full car just because we have all the parts. It was not yet put together until conception happens and the zygote was formed. Thank you. I think we can move on to the next place. Thank [Applause]

40:14 you. So, thank you. Our fourth question tonight is from Rudy Ellis Jones from Emanuel [Applause] College. Um, hello. Thank you for coming today's talk. Um, so my question as someone studying archaeology and biological anthropology, um, I've learned that moral codes and social norms have always been fluid, shaped by time, culture, power. So many ancient and recent societies embraced same-sex relationships and even the idea of third genders uh, well before western conservatism even existed. So when you claim that modern conservative values represent some kind of universal objective moral truth like you said on your chair over there, um aren't you

41:00 just defending a selective historically recent ideology that erases most of human history and targets people who have always been part of it? No. But can you point to me of a and maybe you can educate me. Can you point to me a great power that endorsed samesex marriage, not cohabitation, but marriage ancient Mesopotamia as marriage as as as recognized as marriage in it recognized by the state 100%. And how did that work out for them? It worked out perfectly fine. It was an accepted norm of society. Okay, I still think it's wrong. Can I Okay. Okay. Moving on. So you said it was based on scripture and you believe that there are moral objective universal truths. Yes, there are. So murder is

41:45 wrong today and murder was wrong 2,000 years ago. Right. Okay. Fair. That's not same sex but fair. Fair fact fair fact fair fact fair fact fair fact fair fact fair fact fair fact fair fact fair fact. I see your point. There are moral truths that that are transcendent of time place and matter. Okay. But but so just to clarify you believe that this is in the Bible. This is laid out in the Bible that man shall not sleep with man. And so therefore it's also repeated throughout the New Testament as well. Matthew in the book of Matthew Jesus reaffirms the biblical standard for marriage. Okay. So I'm going to make two very very quick points. So the first um so if we look at the Old Testament in isolation just to start off with as an example. So let's look at Exodus 35:2 which suggests that if you work on the Sabbath you should be put to death. If you look at Leviticus 11:7 it suggests that if you have pork you should be put to death. Let me finish he'll be done. Uh if you plant two crops side by side you should be stoned by your entire village.

42:31 If you wear a suit, which you are wearing now, that contains two different fibers intertwined into the same jacket, you should be burnt at the stake by your own mother. Now, following that rationale, in Leviticus uh 18:22, when it states that man shall not sleep with man, why aren't we burning ourselves at the stake as well? Why aren't we stoning ourselves to death? [Applause] Do you care to address my main contention that Christ affirmed biblical marriage in the book of Matthew? And can you tell me the difference between the ser ceremonial, the moral and the ritual law? And then finally also tell me about Christianity the difference between the new and the old covenant or you just going to cherrypick certain verses of ancient Israel that do not apply to new Christianity. Fair. Fair. I completely

43:16 agree. So we'll look at two points then. So firstly um if we look at the old testament uh we can see the kind of inconsistencies there. We've already touched upon that, right? That makes sense. Second, he mentioned the point of Jesus and Christ. He never mentioned anything to his homosexuality at all. Well, hold on a second. In the Bible, he affirmed, he affirmed biblical marriage as one man and one woman. He said, "A man shall leave his in the New Testament." No, in Matthew, that is not correct. I believe in the New Testament. In the New Testament, well, Romans is also in the New Testament. Secondly, in Romans 1, the Apostle Paul talks negatively about homosexuality explicitly. Also, homosexuality is repeated in the book of Titus and in the book of Jude as not being favorable as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not even talking about the Old Testament verses. There are three types of the 613 Levitical laws. And you, you know, of course, in your own way, cherrypick some

44:02 of them. We do not live under the ceremonial. We do not live under the ritual and but we do live under the moral. There's only 10 of the moral that we as Christians believe we're bound to. Some believe nine, which of course is the decalogue. And so, none of those that you mentioned we as Christians believe that we live under. However, we do look at what Christ looks articulated as the biblical standard of marriage. And we can also look to church tradition for this as well. And the church has had a tradition for well over 2,000 years. Even myself as a Protestant acknowledges that tradition is marriage between one man and one woman. And fair point, but I Okay, say we put aside the Old Testament for now. We'll put that aside and the inconsistencies there. We look purely at the New Testament following your rationale. Okay. Now, when you say that Christ lays specifically and the New Testament states specifically that man shall not sleep with man, I'd like to point out a linguistic error on that point. I did not say that. I said the biblical marriage was affirmed. And then

44:49 Romans 1 did talk negatively about the action of homosexuality. That affirmation comes from eight lines in there that suggest that man shall not sleep with man. Yes. Of course. Yes. The Old Testament and New Testament harmonize one another, but Christ brought it to a different level, a different covenant, and a different moral teaching. It wasn't just enough to say that you shall, you know, man shall strike eye for eye, that you shall turn the other cheek, that you shall love your enemy. Christ's moral standard was much more even elevated than that of the the Israelites and the Hebrews. Well, I'm going to ask you whose Bible. Okay. Now, your Bible that you use currently is written in the English language, right? Correct. Yeah. The King James version. Yes. Thanks to Tindale. Well, exactly. It's written in the English language, which in itself is only say 500 500 years old. Now, the Christianity in itself say 2,000 years old or even older. Yeah. Correct. Now, which means

45:34 that the Bible was originally written not in English but in ancient co Greek. Huh. In cog Greek. Yeah. Correct. Now if we look at the Greek terminology man yes and Jesus spoke Aramaic you could translate things you acknowledge that that's where we translate things but translations are linguistically ambiguous as a former classicist I know that language can't be translated directly so for example if we look at the translation of of of certain words into man so I've got two words here so I've got malakoy which means essentially soft which isn't necessarily directly saying a gay man and then we've got oh god how do I say that um arsenai which essentially means prostitutes Now, if we look at things linguistically, we can pick apart the Bible and say that actually it wasn't saying man shall not sleep with man. It's saying man shall not sleep with prostitutes, which is an entirely different linguistic thing. I'm not even

46:19 getting into Leviticus, though. My contention is completely New Testament focused. This isn't Leviticus. Well, but you said man shall not speak of the night. So, you're talking about Romans. Well, okay. This is this is these words are used throughout the Well, actually, in Romans 1, it was actually women sleeping with women. So, you got your verses wrong. In Romans 1, Paul is prophesying about the end of the world and he's saying that in the end times, woman will like with woman like and man will I I think it might say man will like men like you have to get the verses specifically but it is agreed upon and you can agree this is why tradition is important and I even say this as a Protestant is that we believe that scripture is very important but also look to tradition. Church tradition has had an unbroken chain affirming matrimony. Holy matrimony being one man one woman one even as a a non-atholic I'm glad that Pope Leo has reaffirmed in the last couple of days. And so I'm not even sure your contention your point. Are you saying that the Bible doesn't

47:04 affirm marriage as one man one and woman or you saying church tradition doesn't affirm marriage one man and woman? The Bible doesn't affirm but clearly doesn't affirm. That is complete nonsense. It's it's a linguistic error and it but Christ our Lord which is the standard he affirms this idea that you will leave your father's home going back to Genesis 12 and this idea of Abraham leaving his father's home and you will cleave to your wife that a new it'll be called one. In fact, this idea of a new creation, which is something that is then used by the Apostle Paul to describe the the the church of Christ and the bride of the church and the br the church being the bride of Christ with um Jesus. So, I'm not even sure you're contention. It is but you're just avoiding my point. I'm saying the Bible that we have today is 100% a translation and a translation. I acknowledge that ambiguous and I believe Well, hold on. But what about specifically in Matthew or in the book of Romans? And but in

47:51 order for you to be correct, you mean the church fathers translated it wrong when they were within like 50 years of this. In order for your contention to be correct, you have to say that the early church fathers that wrote the early letters to the church, they were translating it wrong and the tradition they established was wrong. So by then we can lean on tradition and scripture. So when you get tradition plus scripture, you get something that is authentic, that is real, and that is verifiable. I've already highlighted the tradition does not align with scripture. We've gone back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia. But no, but understand but at the time they all they all spoke Greek, they wrote Greek and they they spoke Aramaic. For example, when they were writing the early gospels, the the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they were obviously writing in Greek. They knew that language. So in Matthew, when they were writing Greek and then the early church fathers knew Greek and adopted

48:37 that as church tradition, we have a 2,000 unbroken chain. I think you can irrefutably say that it was the teachings of Christ for one man and one woman because the church tradition has been unbroken for 2,000 years and they derived it from scripture of that original language. You can't argue that that makes sense. I mean, if we agree to disagree, then why don't we look at biology? know better than the church fathers. No, we don't I'm not saying I know better than the church fathers. What I'm saying is linguistically that is undeniably an error. Regardless of what you say that is our lens maybe, but not from the people when they were making these traditions. I agree. They they may have got that right, but that may not have been their original meaning. What we're saying is the meaning has been warped over time because societal and cultural context such as the British Empire bring this question to close. It can be but that is why tradition matters because the tradition they understood the context. Tradition is context dependent. Well,

49:22 yes and no because of course tradition is. But if the tradition lasts for 2,000 years, then we look back as to how did they get to that conclusion? How did they reach that verdict? And if that verdict is in alignment with what we see in scripture, it means that their verdict was correct in scripture. They never they never reached that verdict. As I have historically pointed out, all the in all of the major church councils, it was very modern day. Well, no, no. I'm talking about in like 300 and 400 and 500. The original in the scale of 2,000 years is nothing. No, but they set this unbroken chain. We've had an unbroken chain and a course that says that marriage is one man and one woman. The church has never wavered on this by the British Empire under British former Christianity all the way back to like 200 or 300. The idea of biblical Christianity goes back to the early early times of the church when it was a scattered persecuted church well before

50:09 King Justinian and well before the Eastern Roman Empire well before mass conversions when it was a persecuted church the church believed in one man one woman and because they got it from the script scripture itself. We want to keep going or can we move on to the next question please? Thank you. Thank [Applause] you. Thank you. Our next question is from Damit Wimla from Lucy Cavendish College. Thank you. Um hello Charlie. Um thank you for being here. Um just before I start uh with my question, I wanted to address something you said earlier on sort of western

50:55 Christian values being the reason for the abolishment of slavery globally. Um I'm not sure whether you know this. I I've seen you repeating this quite often. Um I'm a practicing Buddhist and it was actually Buddhism um Buddhist emperors, Emperor Ashoko of India who first abolished slavery globally. So I would um sort of ask you to sort of look at other sort of I will look into that. You did it globally. They had that much the Buddhists had that much span of influence. Oh within India. Okay. I'll look into it. Thank you. Thank you. Um so first of all my first question or my only question is um you've advocated and applauded the reducing and removing of public funding for universities on the

51:41 grounds they promote ideological biases. Given that universities play a critical role in driving national innovation, research and upward mobility, especially through federally funded grants, how do you reconcile this position with the broader societal value that higher education institutes offer? Well, they can, but in Harvard's case, for example, is getting their funding pulled, they have a $50 billion endowment. Just so we are clear, in pounds, that would be like what 42 billion, 45 billion. I mean, I'm trying to learn the conversion rate here. I mean, it's an extraordinary amount of money. They can either e use their endowments to fund it. And if you have certain behavior and certain practices, then you should not get federal funding. Harvard is in direct violation of the United States Supreme Court fair admissions case, which is you

52:26 cannot discriminate people based on the the color of their skin. Go ahead. But isn't the whole point of you can't use endowments like that? The point of Well, they can. No, the point of an endowment is to manage a fund through perpetuity. Cambridge has an endowment and that endowment allows uh professorships to be funded to allow for research into sciences. That's the whole point of You just said, hold on. You just said it funds research into sciences. That's what they should do with their monstrosity of an endowment. Yeah, but the endowment is you the interest alone on their endowment could fund the entire research and development budget of most Ivy League schools. They have a $50 billion endowment. Even like a pod dunk money manager in America can earn a seven to 10% investment in the markets

53:12 the last couple years. That's5 billion dollars of returns that that endowment could then reinvest in whatever they want. Instead, Harvard has become a hedge fund with a radical school attached. And I think that's very wrong for US taxpayers to continue to subsidize. But is not just Harvard. You've called on colleges being a scam. You've constantly attacked higher education institutes. Um, you've attacked liberal arts as a scam. For example, like a lot of conservatives, uh, Peter Thiel studied philosophy at Stanford. Um, Ronald Reagan studied sociology. A lot of them did study liberal arts. And you keep undermining these august institutions which have provided a lot for society.

53:58 like society's backbones have been universities and higher learning institutes and yet you keep attacking them. Well, they used to be largely but again I don't want to speak too much about this country but in America they don't represent fundamental American values. You know Peter Teal after he wrote graduate uh Stanford wrote an entire book criticizing college and then paying people not to go to college. So Peter Teal who spoke at this very school and you guys had a great conversation with him. Do you know that he believes college is such a scam he would pay people $100,000 a year for 20 years straight not to go to college? So not exactly a good argument in your favor. Peter Teal who got a philosophy degree, made billions of dollars, and has now forked over tens of millions of dollars for people not to go to US universities and colleges. Yeah, but but it's not just Peter Teal. I know, but you

54:43 mentioned him. I didn't. But there to complete the point is that Thomas went to did liberal arts. Look, there in America, there are far too many people going to college. We need people to become welders, electricians, people that work with their hands. There is a major trade deficit problem in the United States. We have 11 million well-paying jobs that we cannot find enough labor for. And instead, we have a lot of people going to university to go study North African lesbian poetry. It might sound good, but it doesn't necessarily a either development the content, the character, or the development of the soul, and b it does not necessarily also give you the skills necessary. Some college is good for you.

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