Candace Owens at LSU

Conservative political commentator Candace Owens speaks at the LSU Student Union Theater as part of Turning Point USA's Live Free Tour on March 21, 2023.

Hundreds of people filled the LSU Student Union Theater to listen to conservative political commentator Candace Owens talk gender, climate, education and more Tuesday night.

As part of its Live Free Tour, conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA sponsored the event and helped TPUSA @ LSU, the registered student organization, bring Owens to the campus.

Owens was cheered on by students and community members as she took the stage and spoke for nearly an hour about the American education system, welfare and the importance of family.

"I didn't come from a very political family, but I believed in all the things I learned in school," Owens said. "This is the power of the public education system and why I am fully against it and think the Department of Education needs to be abolished and burned to the ground."

Owens supports a 'school choice' model where parents are allowed to choose where their child goes to school instead of having it based on location.

She said that professors often impart bias in their teaching and then pass that message down to their students.

"They're not teaching you how to think, they're teaching you what to think and there's a big difference there," Owens said.

She also spoke about gender issues, stating that teachers are "encouraging children to take drugs to block their puberty to sell to them a cruel, awful, terrible and irreversible lie that they can choose their gender."

Owens continued by touching on topics ranging from climate change to feminism and connecting them to the central idea that familial values are the constant that is under attack by the various topics she brought up in her talk.

"There is a reason, there is one thing that connects all of these topics," she said. "There is one thing that they are attacking at the exact same time with all of these various narratives and the answer is family. That is the thing."

Closing out her talk before answering questions from LSU students, Owens spoke about how she sees America and what thread connects everyone within its shores.

"What this world is and what American society has always been is a society that unites all of us by an idea," she said. "Not a race, not a gender, but an idea. The idea is that no matter what your station is in life and no matter where you start, American society will reward you if you are willing to work hard."

Email James Wilkins at twilkins@theadvocate.com or follow him on Twitter, @terelljwilkins.