College Where Charlie Kirk Was Killed Revokes Graduation Speaker’s Invite
Posted on: Apr 22, 2026 18:57 IST | Posted by: Nytimes
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Utah Valley University was thrilled that Sharon McMahon, a best-selling author, would speak at its graduation. And then her old posts resurfaced.
Jeremy Peters writes about free speech and covered the conservative movement for The Times for a decade.
A controversy over free speech was not how Utah Valley University had hoped to end an academic year that traumatized the campus, and shocked the nation, when the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated there in September.
But that is exactly what happened when it invited Sharon McMahon, a best-selling author of inspirational nonfiction, to be its keynote commencement speaker. After Mr. Kirk’s assassination, she had lamented his death, but also said some of his rhetoric was bigoted.
Many of Mr. Kirk’s legions of fans, their grief and anger all too raw, accused the university of callous indifference.
Mr. Kirk was killed while making the kind of appearance for which he had become famous — a lively, often tense debate over politics, religion, gender and other touchy topics. He and his followers saw these events as defiant celebrations of free expression in the very place they said they had felt silenced.
Ms. McMahon was no stranger to Utah Valley herself, having spoken there before. She had a fan in Astrid Tuminez, the university’s president, who thought Ms. McMahon’s message about unsung heroes in American history would be healing.
“She is a force of nature and a force for good,” Ms. Tuminez said in a news release in late March. “Our graduates are very lucky to have her as commencement speaker!”
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