College picks convicted Pa. cop killer, Abu-Jamal as commencement speaker

9/30/2014

HARRISBURG, Pa. —A man convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 will deliver the commencement address for a Vermont College. Now the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is reacting.

"I cannot express my disdain enough about Goddard College’s decision to allow this individual to be a commencement speaker," Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said in a news release. "Police officers put their lives on the line every day to protect society and now we have a college allowing an individual convicted of murdering a police officer to share his opinions with impressionable students. This fact is very troubling."

According to a news release posted on the Goddard College website, students at the school selected Abu-Jamal as their speaker. Abu-Jamal received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the college in 1996. 

The release includes the following quote from Goddard College Interim President Bob Kenny, "As a reflection of Goddard’s individualized and transformational educational model, our commencements are intimate affairs where each student serves as her or his own valedictorian, and each class chooses its own speaker ... Choosing Mumia as their commencement speaker, to me, shows how this newest group of Goddard graduates expresses their freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that."

The address will be delivered via an audio recording made over the state prison telephone system, according to the DOC.

“Inmates do have a constitutional right to access telephones. While we do not support or endorse this specific type of activity, we cannot prohibit it from happening.”

The DOC may monitor phone calls, but they cannot control what happens on the other end, according to Wetzel.

Abu-Jamal is serving a life sentence for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981. He originally was sentenced to death in 1983, but the sentence was changed to life in 2012. Abu-Jamal is held at the State Correction Institution at Mahanoy, Schuylkill County.

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