Months after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was killed on the campus of Utah Valley University, the school tapped an author who publicly criticized Kirk days after his death to deliver its commencement address, and to receive an honorary doctorate. The backlash has been swift, pointed, and bipartisan in conservative circles.
UVU selected Sharon McMahon, an author and educator, as the speaker for its April 29 commencement ceremony, Just The News reported. The university also plans to award McMahon an honorary doctorate of education. Kirk was assassinated at the Orem, Utah, campus last September.
The timing and the choice have turned what should be a routine academic ceremony into a flashpoint. Critics say the university could have chosen anyone, an astronaut, an athlete, a business leader, and instead picked someone who used Kirk's murder as an occasion to relitigate his political record.
Days after Kirk was killed, McMahon posted on X that while the murder was horrific, it did not settle accounts in the eyes of Kirk's critics. Fox News reported on the posts that drew the sharpest objections:
"Millions of people feel they were harmed, and the murder that was horrific and should never have happened does not magically erase what was said or done."
McMahon also wrote that Kirk was not viewed by many Americans as someone who "simply engaged in good-faith debates on college campuses," singling out Black, LGBTQ, and Muslim communities as groups who felt harmed by his rhetoric.
"To many Americans, especially if you are Black, LGBTQ or Muslim, Charlie Kirk was not a person who simply engaged in good-faith debates on college campuses."
Those words, posted just days after a man was gunned down, landed differently than a standard policy disagreement. They read less like sympathy and more like a public caveat, an asterisk on a murder. That UVU's administration looked at those posts and still decided McMahon deserved a stage and an honorary degree on the same campus where Kirk died raises a question the university has not publicly answered: why her?
Caleb Chilcutt, the Turning Point USA chapter president at Utah Valley University, appeared on "Fox & Friends" Monday and called the decision exactly what many conservatives were already thinking. He described McMahon's selection as a "slap to the face."
Chilcutt told the program that attitudes on campus were divided, but his own view was unambiguous:
"They could have brought any other speaker. If they liked Charlie, didn't like Charlie, I honestly don't really care. But the fact they brought someone who was so critical, literally days after the assassination on my campus, is just shameful for me."
Note what Chilcutt did not say. He did not demand a pro-Kirk speaker. He did not insist on a conservative. He simply asked the university not to honor someone who used the days after a campus murder to score political points against the victim. That is a low bar. UVU could not clear it.
The ongoing legal proceedings surrounding Kirk's accused killer make the wound even fresher. The case has not been resolved. Families and friends are still waiting for justice. And into that open wound, the university chose to insert a speaker whose most notable recent public commentary about Kirk amounted to a qualified shrug.
Former Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz joined the same program and did not mince words. He labeled McMahon a "horrific choice" of speaker and called her a "liberal hack."
Chaffetz argued the university still had time to fix its mistake:
"Look, there's still time to correct this. This hasn't happened. And if the university is gonna step up and do the right thing, they're gonna cancel her and put in somebody like an astronaut or an athlete or somebody, anybody. But this person, this partisan hack, she should not be addressing the students, not at the commencement."
The former congressman's frustration reflects a broader pattern. Kirk's legacy has become a political test, and institutions keep failing it. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a memorial license plate honoring Kirk, adding another chapter to the list of official decisions that seem designed to minimize the man's life and the manner of his death.
Utah Senator Mike Lee posed a question that cuts to the heart of the double standard. Lee asked what would have happened if Kirk had been a beloved figure on the left rather than among conservatives.
"What if Charlie Kirk had been a beloved figure on the left, rather than among conservatives?... Would UVU have scheduled her to speak at commencement? Not in a million years."
The senator's hypothetical answers itself. Imagine a prominent progressive activist murdered on a university campus. Now imagine that same university inviting a speaker who, days after the killing, posted that millions of people felt harmed by the victim's activism. The outcry from media, faculty, and elected officials would be deafening. Administrators would be fired. Statements would be issued within the hour.
But Kirk was a conservative, so the rules bend. The grief of his family and supporters gets weighed against the grievances of his political opponents, and the opponents win the stage.
President Trump's appointment of Erika Kirk to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors showed one way institutions can honor a legacy with grace. UVU chose a different path entirely.
Utah Valley University, described as Utah's largest university, has not publicly explained its process for selecting McMahon. No statement defending the choice has surfaced in available reporting. No administrator has stepped forward to say why this particular author and educator, out of every possible candidate, deserved the honor of addressing graduates on a campus still marked by tragedy.
That silence is its own statement. It tells the Kirk family, the Turning Point chapter, and conservative students on campus that their pain is secondary to whatever institutional logic drove the decision. It tells graduates who may have admired Kirk, or who simply believe a murder victim deserves better than a qualified eulogy, that their commencement will carry a political edge they did not ask for.
The Kirk family has already endured public attacks from unexpected quarters. Erika Kirk faced a public campaign targeting her in the months after her husband's death. Now the campus where he was killed will hand a microphone and an honorary degree to a woman who used the aftermath of his murder to catalog his alleged offenses.
Meanwhile, a judge recently ruled that prosecutors can remain on the Kirk murder case, keeping the legal process moving forward. The justice system, at least, has not lost the thread.
Commencement speakers are supposed to inspire. They are supposed to give graduates a send-off that unites the room, however briefly, around shared achievement. Picking a speaker who publicly diminished a murder victim, on the campus where he died, months after the killing, fails that basic test by any measure.
Chaffetz is right that there is still time. The ceremony has not happened. The honorary degree has not been conferred. UVU can still choose someone who does not turn a graduation into a political statement about the worth of a dead man's life.
Whether the university will listen is another matter. Institutions that cannot muster basic decency toward a murder victim's memory rarely reverse course because critics ask nicely.
When a university honors someone who used a campus killing to settle political scores, it tells you exactly what that institution values, and it is not the students walking across the stage.
