By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2026-08-14 01:36:08 | Updated at 2026-08-14 05:38:34
6 hours ago
Oprah's latest media blitz, going on several weeks now, seems to have one real goal: Distract from the only Oprah headline that matters.
So far, she's doing a great job, because few mainstream media outlets have picked up on a very anodyne report Oprah Inc. issued through People magazine last month: The talk show host-turned-podcaster is closing her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls next year.
This, in my opinion, is shocking. Oprah founded this school in South Africa nearly 20 years ago, in a ribbon-cutting attended by Nelson Mandela, declaring it her most consequential work: Not only would her eponymous academy educate generations of girls, but she would be saving them from the ravages of poverty, the scourge of AIDS and the dangers of sex trafficking.
As recently as 2019, Oprah told People: 'This school is my greatest legacy. These girls are my deepest, greatest joy.'
So why close the school? If it's her greatest legacy, what's changed? Have 'these girls' ceased to be her deepest, greatest joy?
Oprah's stated reason makes little sense: She says she's going to 'transition' the school 'back to local officials', per People.
'Back' to local officials? It was never in their control in the first place. This was a private academy founded and funded by Oprah through her charitable foundation – and endorsed by no less a South African moral beacon than Mandela.
Now, Oprah says, she will instead offer an 'expanded' scholarship program for girls in South Africa.
Oprah's latest media blitz, going on several weeks now, seems to have one real goal: Distract from the only Oprah headline that matters
Few mainstream media outlets have picked up on a very anodyne report Oprah Inc. issued through People magazine last month: The talk show host-turned-podcaster is closing her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls next year
As recently as 2019, Oprah said: 'This school is my greatest legacy. These girls are my deepest, greatest joy'
The only problem with this explanation: Oprah herself is worth, conservatively, over $3 billion. She could clearly afford to keep this school going and offer an 'expanded' scholarship program.
It's not an either/or proposition.
To my mind, this is the only question worth asking: Why is Oprah really closing her school?
The OWLAG has had its share of scandal — all chronically underreported.
Oprah, it seems, is doing her best to distract.
On July 21 — eight days before the People announcement about her school closing — Oprah sat for an interview with Vanity Fair, in which she revisited one of her most controversial interviews.
Yes: Oprah revived the debate, and ensuing outrage, around her infamous sit-down with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry in 2021.
Oprah came under huge criticism, some of the most savage in her career, for failing to push back on multiple claims levelled against the British Royal Family — all while Harry's grandfather, Prince Philip, was on his deathbed.
But instead of addressing any of that with Vanity Fair, Oprah simply lasers in on her 'Were you silent, or silenced' question — which has since entered the realm of camp.
Number one: That wasn't the main takeaway from an interview which detonated a metaphorical atomic bomb. Number two: Why would Oprah bring this up again?
Could it have been to move the media's eyeballs?
That same day, July 21, Oprah's appearance on actress Keke Palmer's podcast was released. Here, Oprah talked about the myth of 'work-life balance' when you're young, and the advice she offers 'my girls' — presumably, the girls at the soon-to-shutter OWLAG.
'You know, I think when you're not free, not completely free, you can't make decisions based upon what you want,' Oprah told Palmer. 'This is what I say to my girls, you know, graduating from college and starting their first jobs and they're talking to me about, you know, work-life balance.'
If only Palmer had picked up on that thread. But that's not what her podcast does, which Oprah surely knows.
And last week, she appeared in Glamour magazine's video series called 'Girlhood Firsts' — a potentially unfortunate name, given what has been alleged to have occurred at Oprah's school for girls:
October 2007: Just ten months after the school's opening, multiple students alleged that a dorm matron sexually assaulted or otherwise violated them.
The matron was acquitted of all charges in a South African court in October 2010, though the scandal badly damaged the school's reputation.
In fact, Oprah held a press conference in November 2007, in which she said: 'When I first heard about it, I spent about a half-hour going around my house crying.'
Oprah herself is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
March 2009: The school suspended seven girls for 'sexually harassing and fondling classmates', according to the New York Daily News.
On March 31, Winfrey sought to minimize the scandal, saying that 'common infractions' — such harassment was 'common', I guess? — only got media attention because of her name, which just happens to be on the school's edifice.
February 2011: A 17-year-old student at the OWLAG gave birth on campus. Her newborn boy was found dead in one of her bags. Oprah refused to comment, due to, she said, a minor being involved.
Oprah and her partner Stedman Graham (right) made their first public appearance together in almost a decade this week
How the media let that go is beyond me: A child, at Oprah's boarding school, visibly pregnant for months and giving birth on campus.
So yes, one wonders: Why is Oprah Winfrey closing her school, her greatest legacy, meant to house, educate and keep safe the girls she loves more than anything?
It's something the world's media should be pressing. Instead, Oprah is working her beat — bringing out her partner Stedman Graham for their first photo op together in nearly a decade on Tuesday, ostensibly to rebut questions about where he's been and if he's okay.
The only real question: What's happened to the girls of the Oprah Winfrey Academy? And what will become of them?
