Utah Valley University chose author and educator Sharon McMahon to address its graduating class, and now the school is facing pointed criticism from conservatives who say the pick is a deliberate insult to the memory of Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder who was shot and killed on that same campus last September.
Kirk was speaking at his "American Comeback Tour" at UVU in Orem, Utah, on Sept. 10, 2025, when he was shot in the neck and killed. Days later, McMahon took to X to post comments that critics say minimized his death and redirected attention to grievances against him.
The backlash reached national television Monday when Caleb Chilcutt, the Turning Point USA chapter president at Utah Valley University, appeared on "Fox & Friends" and called McMahon's selection a "slap to the face." Former Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, now a Fox News contributor, joined the segment and labeled McMahon a "horrific choice," as Fox News Digital reported.
The controversy centers on two posts McMahon published on X in the days following Kirk's death. In one, she wrote:
"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."
In another post, McMahon offered a more direct characterization of how she believed certain communities viewed Kirk:
"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."
Read those posts again. A man had just been murdered on a college campus. McMahon's first public instinct was not to mourn the loss of life or call for unity. It was to catalog the grievances of people who opposed Kirk's politics, and to make clear she believed those grievances survived his death.
That is her right. But choosing her to speak at the very school where Kirk drew his last breath is a decision that carries its own message. And the people closest to Turning Point USA's campus presence heard it loud and clear.
Chilcutt, who leads the Turning Point chapter at UVU, did not mince words on Monday's broadcast. He framed the issue not as a debate over McMahon's politics but as a matter of basic respect for what happened on his campus.
"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."
That distinction matters. Chilcutt wasn't demanding a conservative speaker. He was asking why, out of every available voice in America, UVU landed on someone whose public reaction to Kirk's killing was to remind the world that many people considered him harmful. The broader media battle over the Kirk assassination case has already generated friction between conservative organizations and outlets they accuse of distorting the story.
Chaffetz went further than Chilcutt, calling McMahon a "liberal hack" and a "partisan hack" and urging the university to pull the invitation before commencement day arrives.
"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."
Chaffetz's argument rests on a simple premise: a commencement speaker is supposed to honor the graduates, not relitigate political disputes, and certainly not disputes that intersect with a killing that took place on the graduates' own campus. Whether UVU agrees remains an open question. The university has not publicly responded to the criticism, and it is unclear whether administrators plan to keep McMahon on the schedule or reconsider.
The Kirk family has already faced public indignities in the months since the assassination. President Trump himself weighed in after a comedian's viral skit mocked Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, a moment that drew widespread conservative outrage and prompted the president to suggest legal action.
Now the campus where Kirk was killed has chosen a commencement speaker whose immediate public response to his death was to catalog the reasons people opposed him. The timing alone would be clumsy. The venue makes it worse.
Fox News Digital's report does not include any statement from Utah Valley University explaining how it selected McMahon, what criteria it used, or whether the administration considered how the choice would land given the campus's recent history. That silence is itself a kind of answer.
UVU is a public university in deep-red Utah. Its students, families, and donors overwhelmingly come from communities that admired Kirk's work or at least respected his right to speak on campus without being killed. The school's refusal, so far, to address the controversy publicly suggests either indifference to those communities or a calculated bet that the outrage will blow over.
The broader conservative movement has shown little patience for that kind of calculation. Grassroots energy on the right remains high, as recent CPAC polling demonstrated, and campus politics remain a flashpoint.
Neither the exact date of UVU's commencement ceremony nor the full context of McMahon's X posts, including her account handle and precise posting dates, has been made public in available reporting. Those details matter. If the ceremony is weeks away, UVU still has time to reconsider. If it is days away, the school may be banking on the news cycle moving on.
McMahon acknowledged in her own posts that Kirk's killing "was horrific and should never have happened." But she immediately pivoted to the claim that his death did not "magically erase what was said or done." That framing treats a man's murder as a sidebar to the political arguments against him. It is a choice, and it tells you something about the person UVU wants standing at the podium.
Conservatives watching this story unfold have seen the pattern before. A figure on the right suffers real harm. Institutions that should respond with basic decency instead use the moment to relitigate political disputes or signal their distance from the victim's views. The message, intended or not, is that some lives matter less when the politics are inconvenient. Ongoing tensions between conservative leaders and establishment institutions only sharpen the frustration.
Chilcutt put it plainly: he doesn't care whether UVU liked Kirk or didn't. He cares that the school chose someone who used the days after a campus murder to remind everyone why the victim had it coming, politically speaking.
If Utah Valley University can't see why that's a problem, the school has a bigger issue than its commencement lineup.
