Canceled Utah Valley University speaker calls out "coercive pressure campaign" from local leaders

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]Welcome back to Takeout. Thanks for hanging out with us. Utah Valley University has canled its graduation commencement address due to what it called, and I quote, increased safety concerns. Sharon McMahon, an author and educator, was set to give the speech.

[00:00:13]She blames this decision on a quote, coercive pressure campaign, unquote, from various political figures, all of it over comments she made following the killing of conservative commentator and organizer Charlie Kirk during a campus event last year. McMahon decrieded the killing, but also posted some of Kirk's own words to illustrate his range of opinions, some of which caused deep offense. Sharon McMahon joins me now.

[00:00:37]Sharon, welcome to the program again.

[00:00:40]Uh, >> nice to see you.

[00:00:42]>> Describe how this came down and what you think it represents and what this pressure c campaign was about.

[00:00:50]What happened was there was an organized campaign on the part of a number of members of Congress and the Utah State Legislature in in conjunction with Turning Point USA and the pressure campaign then created a series of very significant security concerns at the university. I've spoken there twice before and there were not security concerns at the previous two times that I've spoken there, including huge crowds of 8,000 people. So uh this is a very unique situation in which government officials were threatening to withhold funding from the university if I spoke there uh as a private citizen. This is the government threatening a government institution with defunding for hosting a private citizen.

[00:01:36]>> And what does that mean to the future of free speech, yours and others?

[00:01:41]>> It's very concerning. It's it's deeply concerning major because free speech is either for everyone or it is for no one.

[00:01:49]This is not a situation in which I was disinvited from a private institutions's annual conference. That would be their right to disinvite me. This is a government entity telling another government entity what kind of speech is permissible at said taxpayer funded institution. So if we can't have free speech for everyone, we don't have free speech for anyone. If the only type of speech that is allowed is acceptable speech, then that's actually not speech that's free.

[00:02:19]>> What did you post about Charlie Kirk?

[00:02:21]And do you have any regrets about the postings?

[00:02:24]>> What I posted was an educational post that helped people number one who had never heard of Charlie Kirk before.

[00:02:30]There were many thousands of people. I was surprised by that actually. Many thousands of people had never heard of him and had no idea why somebody like him would be assassinated or targeted, which by the way was horrible, horrific, should never have happened. Uh so it educated about who he was, started Turning Point, had this many chapters, this many podcast listeners, that sort of type of uh content. And then it also helped educate people who loved Charlie Kirk who could not understand why someone who was so beloved in their community why someone like him would be controversial to many millions of Americans. So it was contextualizing some of his more controversial takes and helping people understand a bit about who he was and to some people who didn't understand why he might have been a controversial figure. And there's nothing that I said in any of those posts that is in any way inaccurate uh or uh insensitive. I don't regret what I said. What I said was was an honest accounting of the situation. Now, you might disagree uh with you know uh my choice to do that and that would be your your right to do that as an American. Uh but this is not just a a private disagreement between citizens. This is a government uh action and therein lies the problem. Do you have any sense of what the motive was for the Republicans who assailed you, criticized you and then threatened Utah Valley University with funding if you were allowed to speak?

[00:04:01]>> You know, I haven't spoken to any of them personally. None of them have reached out to me personally, so I haven't had a chance to hear directly from them. I can only hypothesize that there was some kind of political expedience for at least some of them in the sense that they were getting something out of it politically. I don't know exactly what that was. I can't I can't say for sure. But they don't this this attack did not just come out of nowhere. I have never interacted with this group of people before. Like I said, I've spoken at this university multiple times. Uh this was not just a random uh event. This was a manufactured outrage. And I I can't tell you for sure what they were getting out of it, but it had to be something or they wouldn't have done it. you were going to speak longer for a minute than I I presume, but in a minute we have left, what would you have told the graduates?

[00:04:50]>> What I one of the things that I would love for them to know is that it's so easy to feel like what we do doesn't matter. It's so easy to look around the internet and feel like I've done everything I can. I made all the calls.

[00:05:01]I did all the donations. I posted about it. Nothing changed. And one of the things that history teaches us is that the people who have gone before us have had never had any assurance of their own success. And they continued to act as if what they would do would matter for their descendants. And I think that's important for every single one of us to remember today that what we do today will impact the country generations from now and they get to be part of deciding what direction the country heads in as we head into the 250th anniversary.

[00:05:31]>> Very quickly, 20 seconds left. Sharon, has this affected your speaking anywhere else?

[00:05:36]>> No. No, not at all. In fact, I continue to get more invites each day, but it's a sad occurrence that happened in Utah.

[00:05:43]>> Sharon McMahon, I appreciate the time.

[00:05:45]Thank you very much.

[00:05:46]>> Thank you. Thanks for having me.