I’m an Orthodox Jew Because of Charlie Kirk

In the fall of 2015, a student government colleague hustled me into a private room in the University of Oregon library to see a visitor I “had to meet” before his flight out of Eugene. Tall, skinny, and with a grin from ear to ear, Charlie Kirk was in Eugene to flip our student government conservative. At a place like the University of Oregon, just scraping together a slate of non-liberals was a stretch. But Charlie was ambitious and wanted to use Oregon as a trial run for flipping student governments at deeply progressive universities across the country.

I was involved in student government, ran recruitment for the Interfraternity Council, and once liked Mitt Romney’s Facebook page. At Oregon, that was enough to make me a recruit.