Gotta love UC Irvine, where apparently you can earn a paycheck teaching composition while making cryptic jokes about political violence—and somewhere along the way, “academic freedom” apparently becomes the answer to everything. Zot zot zot.
Meanwhile, if you’re Nick Shirley, you apparently need $30,000 to $50,000 a month in private security just for exercising your own version of free speech. Even the First Amendment apparently needs a bodyguard.
Shirley, the conservative YouTuber whose investigative videos have made him a favorite target of the progressive establishment, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging California’s new law targeting the kind of reporting he does. The law has been dubbed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” by its critics.
And Shirley isn’t just raising money for lawyers. He’s raising money for security. That’s because Shirley says the political hostility surrounding his reporting, lawsuit and public appearances has become sufficiently serious that he’s spending tens of thousands of dollars every month to protect himself. That’s a lot of money.
It’s also a rather extraordinary indictment of the current political climate. And then along comes UC Irvine lecturer Matthew Goldma, who is still listed on UCI’s School of Humanities website as a composition lecturer. He’s apparently been teaching at UCI since 2022. His job includes teaching students how to write. One might assume that would include understanding the difference between an argument and a threat. Apparently there’s an advanced seminar for that.
Goldman reportedly responded to an Instagram post about Shirley appearing at Harvard by writing:
“Someone can do the funniest thing just before the Kirkiversary.”
“Kirkiversary” is apparently a reference to the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination (it’s been almost a year)..
Now, before anyone reaches for the outrage button, let’s be precise: Goldman did not explicitly write that somebody should kill Shirley. Those are not the words he used. But if you are a university lecturer responding to a public announcement about a political figure appearing at Harvard, and your response involves somebody doing “the funniest thing” shortly before the anniversary of a political assassination, you’re going to have to forgive people for wondering what exactly the joke was.
Perhaps it’s all perfectly innocent. Maybe Goldman was referring to a really hilarious PowerPoint presentation. Perhaps a particularly amusing campus protest. Maybe someone was going to tell a terrific knock-knock joke. We don’t know. And that’s precisely the problem with cryptic references to political violence. They tend to require a little explanation.
Welcome to the UC Irvine School of Creative Interpretations
UCI has long marketed itself as an institution devoted to critical thinking, intellectual diversity and challenging conventional ideas. Which is wonderful. But there is a funny thing about intellectual diversity: It is supposed to apply to people you disagree with, too.
Shirley isn’t exactly everyone’s favorite person on the Irvine campus. He’s conservative. He’s confrontational. He makes videos that annoy people. He investigates subjects that make progressive activists extremely uncomfortable. In other words, he is exactly the sort of person universities should be able to tolerate. Unless the university’s definition of “free speech” secretly means “speech approved by people who already agree with us.”
That’s where this gets uncomfortable.
Because imagine the roles were reversed. Imagine a conservative university lecturer making a cryptic Instagram comment suggesting that a progressive activist might have something unfortunate happen to them just before the anniversary of a politically motivated killing. Would we be hearing about academic freedom? Would UCI tell everyone to relax? Would the explanation be that the professor was merely engaging in sophisticated political satire? Or would CNN have a satellite truck parked outside the Humanities building before lunch? These questions aren’t hypothetical in today’s political environment.
Universities have spent years telling students that words matter. They teach students about microaggressions, hostile environments, harmful rhetoric, online harassment and the importance of creating safe spaces.
Apparently, the concept becomes somewhat more complicated when the person being discussed is a conservative provocateur.
And then there’s the money
Shirley’s security fundraising may ultimately prove to be the most revealing part of this story. He’s saying security costs him $30,000 to $50,000 a month. That’s up to $600,000 a year. For perspective, that’s more than many Californians will earn in a decade.And Shirley is asking supporters to help pay it because he believes his public profile and political reporting have made him a target.
There is something deeply depressing about that. You can disagree with Shirley’s reporting. You can challenge his conclusions. You can criticize his methods. You can even think his videos are political clickbait wrapped in a camera. That’s called America. You don’t have to like somebody’s journalism to defend their right to do it.
And you certainly don’t get to turn political violence into a punchline.
Irvine has seen this movie before
Orange County has never been exactly boring politically. Irvine, however, has developed a particularly impressive talent for turning political disagreements into full-contact municipal theater. We have council meetings where procedural disputes become blood sport.
We have arguments over Ranked Choice Voting. We have campus activists. We have academics weighing in on national political controversies.
And now we apparently have a UCI lecturer whose social-media commentary has become part of a conservative YouTuber’s argument for why he needs a private security operation. At this rate, Irvine may soon need a Department of Political Drama. UCI can provide the faculty. The Irvine City Council can provide the meetings. And Shirley can provide the camera crew.
The irony is almost too perfect.
A man suing California over his First Amendment rights says he needs protection because of the reaction to his political speech.
And a university lecturer whose professional life is built around teaching people how to communicate finds himself at the center of a controversy over a comment that many people interpret as invoking political violence. Maybe the adults in the room should take over.
UCI should determine what Goldman meant. Goldman should explain what he meant. Shirley should continue pursuing his lawsuit through the courts.
And everyone involved should remember that political opponents are not enemy combatants. They’re Americans. Even the annoying ones. Especially the annoying ones. Because that’s the whole point of free speech. You don’t need the First Amendment to protect speech everybody loves. You need it to protect the speech that makes somebody across town absolutely furious.
And if defending that principle now requires Nick Shirley to raise enough money to hire a security detail, perhaps the people who claim to be defending democracy should stop laughing long enough to ask why. After all, “someone can do the funniest thing” isn’t nearly as funny when someone actually gets hurt.
And at UC Irvine, they should be smart enough to understand that. It’s called critical thinking. Apparently, it’s still being taught. At least we think it is.
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