Candace Owens escalated her ongoing feud with Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk by publicly questioning the honorary doctorate Kirk received from Hillsdale College, a prestigious conservative institution known for its fierce opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Owens raised the critique on her podcast, The Candace Owens Show, after social media user Brian Allen made a widely circulated argument that Hillsdale awarded Kirk the degree primarily due to her late husband Charlie Kirk’s fame and prominence rather than any individual academic achievement.
Allen’s post described the decision as hypocritical, arguing the degree was “the definition of DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion for me and not for thee,” a framing that Owens partly endorsed, while adding her own argument that honorary doctorates are generally meant to recognise academic distinction rather than a commencement speech.
On her YouTube channel, Owens went through what she described as a review of Erika Kirk’s CV, questioning directly what specific accomplishment or expertise the honorary degree was being awarded in recognition of.
The backlash extended well beyond Owens herself, with critics on social media pointing out a perceived contradiction in Kirk’s acceptance of a traditional collegiate honour given that Charlie Kirk spent years actively discouraging young people from pursuing four-year university degrees.
The criticism also resurfaced Charlie’s 2022 book The College Scam, which argued that traditional higher education was exploitative and overpriced, making Erika’s Hillsdale ceremony and honorary doctorate a symbolically charged choice in the eyes of many observers.
Despite the controversy, Erika Kirk delivered a personal and emotional commencement address, telling graduates that Charlie had deeply loved Hillsdale, urging them to embrace her husband’s sense of purposeful living, sharing a story about the couple’s honeymoon, and encouraging graduates to marry young and have more children than they could afford.
In a public statement, Kirk said she wakes up every morning to headlines that lie about her, noting she has faced mockery from comedians, doubts about her fitness as CEO, and what she described as false claims by Owens that she had murdered her husband.
Owens denied ever making that specific claim, responding on X that of everything she had said about Kirk, it was telling that Kirk chose to respond to something Owens had not said, accusing Kirk’s team of consistently lying.
Turning Point USA’s spokesperson Andrew Kolvet separately shared what appeared to be screenshots of text exchanges allegedly involving Owens, in which one message asked as a supposed first question why Kirk had murdered her husband, a claim Owens said was fabricated and dishonest, deepening a feud that shows no signs of de-escalating.
