OXFORD — Vice President JD Vance and Erika Kirk, the widow of slain political activist Charlie Kirk, called for a generational realignment around conservative Christian values at the University of Mississippi on Wednesday.

About 10,000 attendees packed into the Sandy and John Black Pavilion on the university’s Oxford campus. It was the latest stop on a tour of college campuses across the nation by the conservative grassroots organization Turning Point USA, founded by Charlie Kirk. 

“Your generation is living at a crossroads, and we are witnessing in real time the battle raging for the soul of your generation,” said Erika Kirk.  

The event marked the only joint appearance of the vice president and Erika Kirk, the newly minted CEO of Turning Point USA.   

Charlie Kirk, one of the nation’s most famous conservative activists, was scheduled to speak at the event before he was assassinated last month in Utah. Vance was asked to speak in his place in Oxford by Erika Kirk. The vice president delivered brief remarks honoring the life of Charlie Kirk, whom he called a personal friend. 

Vance also took questions from audience members, a hallmark of the late conservative activist Kirk, who built a media empire in part based on viral videos of himself verbally sparring with college students. 

“We ought to have faith that the best way to make sure the best idea wins is to actually just have a discussion. And that is what this event is all about, that is what Turning Point USA is all about,” Vance said. “We’re going to have a discussion tonight, and that is what Charlie would want us to do.” 

Calling himself a “geriatric millennial,” Vance aimed a large portion of his remarks at young people. He said the Trump administration’s immigration policies would limit competition for new entrants to the labor market, which he said would prevent immigrants from driving down wages. 

Vance, who has in the past railed against “childless cat ladies,” also filled his remarks with appeals to college students to have children when they are young and anchor their lives around family.

“While you’re young, have those babies if you’re able to,” Vance said. 

The future of the country would be best served with a “properly rooted Christian moral order” at its core, Vance added. 

That sentiment pulsed through both Vance’s remarks and Erika Kirk’s. She called her presence on campus “a spiritual reclaiming of territory.”

She called Generation Z, which is trending rightward according to some surveys, the “courageous generation.”

“My husband believed that to his core,” Kirk said. “That’s why he went on campuses. That’s why he was trying to reach you.” 

Vance also revealed what he said was a never-before-shared anecdote about Kirk, whom he called the most effective political figure he had ever seen. The vice president said Kirk once called him with concerns about the Trump administration’s policies in the Middle East. The call reminded the administration that Kirk’s audience no longer supported sending American soldiers to fight in foreign entanglements, Vance said.     

A sea of red “Make America Great Again” and white “47” caps were worn by much of the jubilant crowd inside the arena. Seated in the front rows was a who’s who of Mississippi’s Republican political leadership. Attendees included Gov. Tate Reeves, U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde Smith, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Attorney General Lynn Fitch. 

Emily Lecler, a University of Mississippi student from Green Bay, Wisconsin, attended the event as a volunteer for the Turning Point chapter on campus. Kirk and his organization appealed to her because it counters what she sees as an “anti-American” sentiment on college campuses

“If you want the cookie-cutter model of how we should be. He is the umbrella of everything Turning Point stands for. Godly, American,” Lecler said. “I think when he died it was really hard, but it pushed people in the right direction and opened a lot of people’s eyes.”

But there was also opposition on campus. 

A coalition of student groups opposed to the Turning Point rally hosted a counter event that featured speakers such as California Congressman Ro Khanna and Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson, a member of the “Tennessee Three,” a group of Democratic lawmakers who were expelled by the Republican majority over a protest over a gun-control protest in the Legislature in 2023.

The coalition also released a statement focusing, among other issues, on the Trump administration’s attempts to exert more federal control over the American higher education system. The administration has threatened to withhold federal funding from disfavored institutions and has asked universities to agree to conservative priorities such as caps on numbers of international students, limited definitions of gender and embracing the idea that “academic freedom is not absolute.” 

The student groups, which included the College Democrats, called Wednesday’s Turning Point event an attempt to “provide academic legitimacy to the hatred, suppression of free speech, and over-partisanship championed by the administration of President Trump and Vice President Vance.” 

The statement also referenced what it called a “complicated history, full of troublesome lapses in moral clarity, and this event brings just one more speaker whose legacy will not endure the test of time.”

The University of Mississippi occupies a unique status in the nation’s history of political divisions playing out on college campuses. 

In 1962, a white mob erupted in violence when James Meredith, a Black man, fought to integrate the university. U.S. marshals protected him on and off the Oxford campus. The episode became one of the most consequential confrontations over desegregation in American higher education, and the university has honored Meredith several times since. 

Decades later, against the backdrop of new political division, a heavy law enforcement presence again watched over the university after Kirk’s assassination seven weeks ago.  

Turning Point became a multimillion-dollar operation under Charlie Kirk’s leadership and was credited with helping to return Trump to office. 

Since Kirk’s killing, his podcast and social media have attracted millions of new followers. There has been an outpouring of interest in expanding Turning Point’s footprint on college and high school campuses, the group has said.