Comedy icon Jerry Seinfield reportedly receives over 200,000 dollars per graduation speech – a ludicrous sum by most standards. Last Sunday, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commencement speech at Goddard College of Vermont drew criticism for a different reason: Abu-Jamal is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer.
In 1982, Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for fatally shooting twenty-five year old Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Faulkner had pulled over William Cook, Abu-Jamal’s brother, for driving the wrong direction on a one way street. Abu-Jamal, who was parked in a nearby parking lot, crossed the street and then shot and killed Faulkner with a .38 caliber revolver. Abu-Jamal was also wounded during the exchange.
After nearly two decades of litigation, Judge William H. Yohn Jr. of the Federal District Court in Philadelphia overturned Abu-Jamal’s death sentence on the grounds that the instructions to the jury were unconstitutional. Although prosecutors declared they would no longer be seeking the death penalty in 2011, Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams said that Abu-Jamal will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, without the possibility of parole.
Abu-Jamal attended Goddard College briefly in 1970, and earned his degree there in 1996, while still awaiting his execution.
“Goddard reawakened in me my love of learning,” Abu-Jamal explained in the speech. “In my mind, I left death row.”
Prior to his arrest, Abu-Jamal was politically active in both the Black Panther Party and at various broadcasting stations across Philadelphia. At the time of his arrest in 1981, he had become President of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Since then, Abu-Jamal has penned several books, including “We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party,” “Live from Death Row” and “All Things Censored.” The New York Times described Abu-Jamal as “perhaps the world’s best known death-row inmate.”
Goddard College, a six-hundred student school, holds twenty graduation speeches every year – one for each degree program – to allow students to customize their graduation and speaker. Reactions to Goddard’s most recent decision were mixed.
Philadelphia law enforcement condemned the screening of Abu-Jamal’s video and assembled on Tuesday at the site of Faulkner’s murder to commemorate his service. The officers observed 30 minutes of silence as a symbolic effort to offset Abu-Jamal’s video of the same length.
Senator Pat Toomey of Philadelphia (R) denounced the decision.
“I cannot fathom how anyone could think it appropriate to honor a cold-blooded murderer,” the Senator said. “What possible enlightenment can your students obtain from this man?”
Philadelphia Republicans agreed and tweeted. “Allowing a convicted murderer to speak at Commencement is wrong,” followed by the hashtag “rememberthevictim.”
Under the same hashtag, the PA House Republicans called attention to a Revictimization Relief Bill press conference they held. The proposed bill would allow a victim to bring civil action against an offender causing ‘revictimization.’
Maureen Faulkner, Daniel’s widowed wife, expressed her personal outrage over Goddard’s decision.
“Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion,” she wrote, “...today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter.”
Despite public backlash, Goddard faculty member H. Sharif Williams defended the decision on the school’s website.
“We have created an incubator for thinkers, artists, healers, activists and writers,” Williams wrote, “who have decided not to allow their brilliance to be diminished nor snuffed out behind the walls of any form of prison—real or metaphoric.”
Goddard Interim President Bob Kennedy also stood by the administration’s decision to allow Abu-Jamal to speak.
In the video, Abu-Jamal makes no reference to the shooting, instead focusing on Gaza, unrest in Ferguson and the war in Iraq. “These are some of the challenges that abide in the world, which it will be your destiny to try and analyze and resolve,” Abu-Jamal said. “As students of Goddard, you know that those challenges are not easy, but they must be faced and addressed.”
At the end of his speech, Abu-Jamal also speaks about the psychological effects of incarceration and how Goddard helped him through it.
“In one of the most [o]ppressive environments on Earth (Death Row), Goddard allowed me to study and research human liberation and anti-colonial struggles on two continents: Africa and Latin/Central America. I thank you for that grand opportunity.”
