Mumia Abu-Jamal is serving a life sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. His speech, delivered via video, for Vermont’s Goddard College on Sunday inspired controversy.
Mumia Abu-Jamal once faced a death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer, and on Sunday he encouraged the graduating class of Goddard College to make the world better.
Abu-Jamal spoke via prerecorded video to students at the Vermont college, which he first attended in the 1970s and earned his degree from in 1996. The nontraditional college features individualized programs without exams or grades, and students and faculty only spend eight days on campus twice a year. About 20 students attended Sunday's commencement.
In his speech, Abu-Jamal did not discuss the crime for which he earned the death sentence in 1981. He was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2011 for the murder of Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner. The New York Times has referred to Abu-Jamal as "perhaps the world's best known death-row inmate."
In his address, he encouraged students to make the world better.
"Think about the myriad of problems that beset this land and strive to make it better," Abu-Jamal said in the video.
He added what he learned at the college allowed him to mentally leave death row. College officials said graduates chose Abu-Jamal to "engage and think radically and critically."
AFP / Getty Images TOM MIHALEK
We have created a space for people, like Mumia and our thousands of students and alumni/ae around the world, who have tremendous obstacles to their educational ambitions to unshackle their dreams and achieve their goals. We have created an incubator for thinkers, artists, healers, activists and writers 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.
Via goddard.edu
from BuzzFeed - Breaking http://ift.tt/10DmnQo
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