Can the Brown University tragedy bring the left and the right together?

Let’s start with the easy part. There is absolutely no evidence so far to suggest that the shooter at Brown University targeted Alabama native Ella Cook — one of two students who died in the massacre last Saturday — because of her political opinions.

That’s what several right-wing commentators said, noting that Cook had been vice president of the College Republicans at Brown. Cook “was targeted for her conservative beliefs, hunted, and killed in cold blood,” the national chairman of the College Republicans wrote in a post on X, which has garnered nearly two million views.

Please. We still don’t know who opened fire in a classroom building at Brown, or why. It’s reckless — and cynical — to pretend that we do.

But behind every crazed conspiracy theory lies a small grain of truth. Conservative students are not in danger for their lives, but they do experience ostracism and discrimination. People who claim otherwise are like climate change deniers, except in this case the naysayers are on the left.

I’m on the left, too. And it’s time for us to come clean about the biased environments we have created.

I feel that every time I hear a colleague say all Trump voters are white supremacists or fascists. I feel it when students email me to complain about the left-wing groupthink in their classes.

And I feel it, most of all, when they come out to me as Trump supporters in my office, with the door closed. I plead with them to share their views with others, which is the only way we learn anything. But they tell me the cost would be too high: They’d be vilified and canceled.

That’s why so many Republicans disdain higher education. They know that we abhor their views, and they return the favor.

Now they’re trying to impose their will upon us. Start with President Donald Trump’s “compact,“ which is really just an act of extortion: Do what we say, or we’ll cut off your funding. I’m glad that Brown — like Penn — rejected it, but schools with smaller endowments might face a more difficult choice when deciding whether to do so.

Then there are state measures restricting instruction about race and gender. The logic goes like this: You taught things we didn’t like, so we’re going to prevent you from teaching about them at all.

Remember the adage about two wrongs? We seem to have forgotten it. Liberals created an intolerant atmosphere on our campuses. In response, conservatives are taking political measures to silence us.

It’s time to end this madness. And perhaps we can use the Brown tragedy to do just that.

The other student who was murdered was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Uzbekistan, Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov. He survived a serious childhood illness and wanted to become a doctor, so he could assist other people who had suffered like he did.

You haven’t heard a lot about Umurzokov in right-wing media, which has been busy memorializing Ella Cook. But neither have my fellow liberals made much mention of Cook; instead, they have been commemorating the remarkable life of Mukhammad Umurzokov.

Imagine a national day of mourning, where we switched all of that up. In Congress and in statehouses, Democratic leaders would hoist large blow-up pictures of Cook — the kind you see in sports stadiums — to memorialize her. And GOP officials would do the same for Umurzokov.

It’s time to end this madness. And perhaps we can use the Brown tragedy to do just that.

That would require courage on both sides, which is in short supply these days.

Democrats would need to celebrate a brave churchgoing conservative who bucked the dominant liberal consensus on campus. And Republicans would need to challenge their party’s nativist and anti-Islamic rhetoric by praising a young Muslim immigrant who wanted to do good in and for America.

They would also have to call out the conspiracy theorists in their midst. Political violence is real, but there’s no evidence that Ella Cook was killed because of her politics. Honest Republicans know that. They need to say it.

And maybe, just maybe, that can begin the healing that our battered nation so desperately needs. We simply cannot make anything better by hating on each other.

At our schools and universities, we’ll resolve to welcome all points of view. Instead of maligning the other side — or trying to censor it — we’ll bring different sides together.

And we will educate a new generation of citizens, who have both the will and the skill to converse across their differences. That will be a great way to remember Ella Cook and Mukhammad Umurzokov. And it will make America great, too. For all of us.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”.