This week, I’ve been in Gothenburg, where thousands of international educators are gathered for the EAIE annual conference. The days here have been filled with conversations about mobility, belonging, and building bridges across borders.
And as I wrapped up another day of meetings, my phone buzzed with news that made those conversations feel both urgent and fragile: Charlie Kirk had been assassinated in Utah.
Kirk was a polarizing figure. He built a movement that inflamed, divided, and emboldened. Many in higher education disagreed fiercely with him — some even saw him as an existential threat to the values we hold dear. But his killing is not a victory for one side. It is a wound for all of us.
Because when bullets replace arguments, the very premise of education collapses.
The Two Worlds We’re Living In
At EAIE, I heard stories of universities creating sanctuaries for students fleeing war zones. I heard about collaborations that stretch across continents, new models of exchange, experiments in compassion at scale.
From back home in the U.S., I read headlines of political violence. A man shot dead on a university campus, in front of students, while asking them to challenge him under a tent emblazoned with the slogans “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong.”
Two worlds. Two answers to the same question: How do we handle difference?
One answer is to build connections that outlast conflict. The other is to silence conflict with violence. One is difficult, slow, and human. The other is fast, absolute, and final.
Compassion as a Strategy, Not a Sentiment
I know that societies unravel not only from external threats but from the erosion of empathy. Violence is the final stage of that erosion — the moment when we stop seeing the other side as human.
And once we cross that threshold, there’s no debate left to win, only damage to survive. That’s why the work of protecting empathy is not sentimental, but existential.
Empathy keeps us from crossing that line, but empathy alone isn’t enough. Empathy is fragile if it stays private, confined to what we feel. It becomes durable only when practiced, scaled, turned outward, and expressed as compassion — the act of turning care into action.
Compassion isn’t weakness. It’s a survival strategy. It’s what makes cooperation possible. It’s what allows people who disagree profoundly to still build together. Without it, every community — from classrooms to nations — becomes a battlefield.
On this 6-week trip around the world, I couldn’t help but notice: on trains, on planes, in waiting halls — faces lit not by conversation, but by Instagram feeds. If we are so checked out from the world around us, are we still capable of the empathy that compassion demands? A thought I’ll be unpacking more fully in a future piece…
International education has always been one of the few global projects built on compassion. We move students across borders not just to earn degrees, but to expand their capacity to understand, to tolerate, to imagine a world bigger than themselves.
That’s why gatherings like EAIE don’t just feel like a conference. It feels like a reminder — that compassion can still be practiced, taught, and scaled.
What This Demands of Us
Charlie Kirk’s death will be weaponized. Some will turn him into a martyr. Others will argue he brought it on himself. Both responses miss the point. The real danger is that we normalize the idea that violence is a legitimate form of persuasion.
This isn’t just America’s crisis. Around the world, we see fear weaponized, compassion dismissed, and violence increasingly justified as politics. If we don’t name it anywhere, we will see it everywhere.
Here, in Gothenburg, surrounded by people who still believe in the power of dialogue, I feel a responsibility — we all should — to hold the line.
To insist that compassion is not optional.
To model understanding, even when it’s hardest.
To remind the world that education is about expanding horizons, not narrowing them.
Because every time we fail to hold the line, we risk letting violence become an acceptable answer to disagreement. And once it does, no society survives intact.
This week, Gothenburg felt like a sanctuary. But sanctuaries mean little if they stay walled off. We can’t just celebrate global learning among ourselves. We must carry its values into the fractured societies we return to.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination is not just an American tragedy. It is a human one. It is a reminder of what happens when we fail to build bridges and settle for barricades.
So my plea, to myself as much as to you: let us not meet hate with hate, or fear with fear. Let us meet it with the radical, difficult, unglamorous work of compassion.
Because if international education doesn’t defend that truth, then who will?
Here’s What We Can Do
It’s easy to end with sentiment. But if compassion is truly a strategy, then it demands action. Here’s what each of us can do — for ourselves, for our students, and for our countrymen:
1. For ourselves — practice radical listening.
Not the kind where we wait for our turn to argue, but the kind where we risk being changed by what we hear. In a polarized world, listening is no longer passive. It is resistance against the urge to reduce people to caricatures.
2. For our students — teach them to argue without annihilating.
We owe the next generation more than degrees. We owe them the ability to debate without dehumanizing. To disagree without destruction. Let’s make classrooms training grounds for compassion, not echo chambers for outrage.
3. For our communities — model belonging.
Compassion isn’t just taught; it’s witnessed. When neighbors see us cross divides — political, cultural, generational — they’re reminded it’s possible. If we only show compassion in professional circles and not at home, we are failing the very societies we serve.
4. For our nations — defend dialogue, even when it hurts.
Every government faces the temptation to shut down dissent in the name of safety. But history shows that silencing voices breeds more violence, not less. Our role as educators is to demand dialogue even when it is messy, uncomfortable, or offensive.
5. For our shared humanity — refuse to normalize violence.
Assassination cannot become just another news cycle. We must reject the language of elimination and return to the language of persuasion. That’s not naïve; it’s necessary.
Moving Forward
The choice before us is stark: bridges or barricades. This week reminded me that the world still wants bridges. The headlines remind me how quickly they can collapse.
So as I wrap up at EAIE, I’m carrying this conviction: compassion is not an accessory. It is the only infrastructure strong enough to carry us forward.
And in a world where bullets have once again silenced words, our task as international educators is simple but profound: to make compassion the loudest voice in the room.
If our students see us choose compassion in the face of fear, they will learn to do the same. If they don’t, they will inherit only barricades. That’s the true measure of our work.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
