Utah Valley University drops commencement speaker who disparaged Charlie Kirk after his assassination on campus

Utah Valley University announced Thursday it will hold its April 29 commencement ceremony without a featured speaker, pulling author and podcaster Sharon McMahon from the program after weeks of mounting backlash over her social media posts about Charlie Kirk following his assassination on the same campus last year.

The university framed the reversal as a safety decision. Conservative critics, including a sitting U.S. senator and the campus chapter of Turning Point USA, called it something simpler: a long-overdue correction of a tone-deaf choice that never should have been made.

In a brief release, UVU said the cancellation came "due to increased safety concerns related to the speaker and in consultation with public safety professionals and Sharon McMahon." The school offered no details about what those safety concerns entailed, and pivoted quickly to celebrating the graduating class, more than 13,400 students, about a third of whom are the first in their families to earn a college degree.

What McMahon said, and when she said it

The controversy traces back to the days after Kirk's killing. McMahon condemned the assassination in a Facebook post on the day it happened. But by September 12, her tone had shifted. In an Instagram post archived by Salt Lake City-area TV station KSL, McMahon wrote that Kirk had pushed "bigoted ideas" and offered a pointed qualifier on the public mourning:

"It's important to remember that the incredible tragedy of a public assassination does not erase the harm many experienced from his words, and the ensuing actions his followers took."

That post drew sharp criticism from Kirk's allies and supporters, who saw it as an attempt to rationalize hostility toward a man who had just been murdered on a college campus. Caleb Chilcutt, president of the UVU chapter of TPUSA, said on April 9 in a statement posted to X that McMahon had "posted a now-deleted series of out-of-context quotes from Charlie in an effort to tarnish his name and minimize the tragedy."

When UVU then invited McMahon to deliver the commencement address, at the same school where Kirk was shot and killed, the backlash intensified. The question wasn't whether McMahon had a right to her views. The question was why a university would choose, of all the speakers in the country, someone who had publicly diminished a man's legacy within weeks of his murder on that very campus.

Sen. Mike Lee and TPUSA push back

Republican Sen. Mike Lee took to X with a pointed thought experiment. He asked readers to imagine the roles reversed, a conservative commentator who had disparaged a beloved liberal figure immediately after that person's assassination at UVU. Would the university have invited that commentator to speak at commencement?

"Not in a million years. Not in ten million years. So why does UVU think this is okay? It's not."

Lee's post cut to the core of the complaint: not that McMahon should be silenced, but that the university's selection revealed a double standard so glaring it bordered on institutional indifference. The episode recalls other recent controversies where institutions have faced accusations of applying rules and standards selectively depending on which side of the political aisle is affected.

TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet, speaking on The Charlie Kirk Show Thursday, pushed back hard on the university's framing of the cancellation as a response to safety threats. He told Fox News Digital he "just felt it was in really bad taste." On the show, he was more direct:

"Listen, this was, nobody was making any threats about this, nobody was, not on the show or anywhere else. We were just saying it was, it was a bad idea."

Kolvet credited Lee for being "very loud about that in Utah" and expressed relief that the university had reversed course. Blake Neff, a producer on The Charlie Kirk Show, noted the timing on the broadcast Thursday, saying UVU had announced the cancellation "minutes ago." But Neff also flagged what he called the university's evasion of responsibility.

"Now here's what's annoying, they say it's not because, oh, we picked a terrible speaker and that was our bad, they say they have increased safety concerns about what happened, so of course, basically, you know, it's our fault, we were engaged in menacing behavior, they say, but regardless, it's a speaker they shouldn't have chosen."

The university's deflection

That framing, blaming the backlash rather than the decision, is worth examining. UVU did not acknowledge any error in judgment. It did not explain how McMahon ended up on the short list in the first place. It did not address the concerns Lee and others raised about a double standard in how conservative figures are treated on campus, even in death.

Instead, the university wrapped the reversal in the language of public safety, a move that allowed administrators to avoid accountability while implicitly casting the critics as a threat. Neff and Kolvet both rejected that characterization on air. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that TPUSA did not immediately respond to a separate request for comment.

Chilcutt, the UVU chapter president, had already laid down a marker. In his Thursday statement, he said McMahon "was an inappropriate speaker to begin with, and there are still better options available for this year's commencement speaker." The university chose not to find one. It will hold the April 29 ceremony with no featured speaker at all, a decision that punishes the graduating class for the administration's own misstep.

Consider what those 13,400 graduates now face. They earned their degrees. They showed up. And instead of hearing from a speaker who could unite the campus community, they get an empty podium, because administrators picked a polarizing figure, got called on it, and then declined to course-correct with a replacement. The pattern of institutional leaders ducking accountability while real people absorb the consequences is by now familiar.

A campus still grieving

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University last year. The wound is fresh. Students, faculty, and community members who supported Kirk, or simply believe that a murder victim deserves basic dignity, had every reason to object to McMahon's selection.

McMahon's September 12 post did not merely offer a political disagreement with Kirk's views. It used the occasion of his assassination to relitigate his public record, telling followers that the "incredible tragedy" of his killing should not overshadow "the harm many experienced from his words." Whatever one thinks of Kirk's politics, the timing and venue of that message were unmistakable. And inviting its author to speak at commencement on the same campus where Kirk died sent a signal that UVU either did not understand or did not care about the message it was sending.

The broader pattern is worth noting. Across higher education, conservative speakers, donors, and organizations routinely face a hostile climate, from disinvitations to protests to administrative cold shoulders. When a conservative figure is the victim of actual violence, the expectation from many quarters is that the mourning period should be brief and the criticism should resume quickly. McMahon's post fit that template precisely. The fact that political battles over deeply held values continue to intensify across the country only makes the university's original decision harder to explain.

Lee's hypothetical remains unanswered. If a conservative commentator had posted, days after the assassination of a progressive icon on a college campus, that the victim's "bigoted ideas" and the "harm" caused by their words should not be forgotten, would any university in America invite that person to deliver a commencement address at the scene of the killing? The answer is obvious. The double standard is the point.

What comes next

UVU has not said whether it will revisit the decision to go without a speaker entirely, or whether any internal review of the selection process is underway. The university's release focused entirely on the safety rationale and the size of the graduating class. No administrator has publicly addressed the substance of the criticism, that the choice was, at best, careless and, at worst, a deliberate provocation.

McMahon herself has not publicly commented on the cancellation beyond whatever consultation the university referenced in its statement. The willingness of conservative leaders and organizations to push back publicly against institutions that take sides, even implicitly, appears to have made a difference here. But the fact that it took weeks of sustained pressure, a U.S. senator's intervention, and national media attention to produce what should have been an obvious call raises its own set of questions.

The 13,400 graduates walking on April 29 deserved better, from their university, from the selection committee, and from the adults who turned their commencement into a national controversy rather than admit a mistake.

When an institution would rather leave the podium empty than say "we got it wrong," the problem isn't safety. It's pride.