Hillsdale College Commemorates Charlie Kirk
On the first anniversary of his death, the College honors his love of learning.
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College is commemorating the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death on Sept. 10 by sharing the 28 online courses in which he enrolled. The College invites Americans to honor its friend and the founder of Turning Point USA by continuing the learning he loved.
“I keep a list in my head of the six or eight young people — and I’m very privileged, I get to know many inspiring young people — who are the best I ever saw,” said Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, at Kirk’s memorial service last September. “Charlie is the only one who was never a full-time student at Hillsdale College who was on that list. We will miss him dearly. He can’t be replaced.”
“He was a student, right? He wanted to know.”
Dr. Arnn recently shared his memories of Charlie on the Charlie Kirk Show, including their first meeting:
“I asked him some hard questions, and he couldn’t answer. And I said, ‘So you’re going to fix the world, and you don’t know much about it,’” Dr. Arnn said.
“I knew him for 12 years. He grew so much. He gave a speech for Hillsdale College a few months before he was killed, and after it was over, I walked up and I said, ‘Okay, boy, you have learned a lot,’” Dr. Arnn said. “He was becoming an important man. He was admired all over the place by powerful people. And I beat him up, and his reaction to that was exactly right. He was a student, right? He wanted to know.”
Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow and the CEO of Turning Point USA, spoke at Hillsdale’s Commencement ceremony in May and said that her husband’s studies helped him look beyond political commentary to seek what is good, true, and beautiful.
“This institution wasn’t normal,” Kirk said during Commencement. “It was something that elevated his thinking to be a thought leader and really become a serious person.”
“It was something that elevated his thinking to be a thought leader and really become a serious person.”
The courses Charlie Kirk enrolled in included:
- A Proper Understanding of K-12 Education: Theory and Practice
- American Citizenship and Its Decline
- American Heritage: From Colonial Settlement to the Current Day
- An Introduction to C.S. Lewis: Writings and Significance
- S. Lewis on Christianity
- Civil Rights in American History
- Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution
- Constitution 201
- Dante’s Divine Comedy
- Economics 101: The Principles of Free Market Economics
- Introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics: How to Lead a Good Life
- Introduction to the Constitution
- Introduction to Western Philosophy
- Mathematics and Logic: From Euclid to Modern Geometry
- Public Policy from a Constitutional Viewpoint
- The American Left: From Liberalism to Despotism
- The Federalist Papers
- The Genesis Story: Reading Biblical Narratives
- The Great American Story: A Land of Hope
- The Presidency and the Constitution
- The Real American Founding: A Conversation
- The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic
- The Second World Wars
- The U.S. Supreme Court
- Theology 101: The Western Theological Tradition
- Totalitarian Novels
- Western Heritage: From the Book of Genesis to John Locke
- Winston Churchill and Statesmanship
To commit to the Charlie Kirk online course path, click here.
For photos of Charlie Kirk at Hillsdale College, click here. For photos from Erika Kirk’s 2026 Commencement speech at Hillsdale, click here. For a headshot of Dr. Arnn, click here. For photos of Hillsdale College, click here. For a high-resolution copy of the Hillsdale College clocktower logo, click here.
About Hillsdale College Online Courses
Hillsdale College’s free, not-for-credit online courses feature lectures from the College’s faculty members across various disciplines, including politics, history, economics, religion, and literature. More than five million students have enrolled in an online course with Hillsdale College. For more information on Hillsdale College’s online courses, visit online.hillsdale.edu.
DATE: Sept. 10, 2026