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Disgrace At Antioch

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5/04/00 5:25 p.m.
Disgrace At Antioch
A "liberal" school honors a cop killer.

By Daniel J. Flynn, executive director, Accuracy in Academia and author of the monograph, Cop Killer: How Mumia Abu-Jamal Conned Millions Into Believing He was Framed.

n Saturday, April 29, more than 500 people converged upon the sleepy town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. Their purpose was to protest Antioch College, which was honoring convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal at its commencement.

At first glance, Antioch’s commencement exercises might have seemed not unlike graduation ceremonies held at any other college. A Maya Angelou poem was read. The names of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd were invoked. Rudy Giuliani was denounced.

A closer look, however, revealed just how bizarre the event was. Leslie Feinberg, a woman who now claims to be a man, was the school’s first, less controversial, commencement speaker. Despite assurances that Abu-Jamal’s case would not be discussed at the graduation — hence, school officials claimed, no need for a rebuttal by his victim’s widow — the crew-cutted Feinberg devoted her address to outlining the various conspiracy theories portraying Abu-Jamal as a framed radical. She/he characterized the case as the "persecution of a U.S. intellectual, whose case represents censorship."

As the time came for Abu-Jamal’s taped remarks to be played over the public-address system, students and faculty members burst into wild applause. About a dozen non-conformist parents, and a few brave young people, stood and turned their backs. The hundreds of protesters roped off about 200 yards away walked off en masse.

The death-row inmate began his highly anticipated address by asking the students what people would make their list of individuals they most admire. "Of course, in any huge student body," the former cab driver told the graduating seniors, "there is a wealth of perspectives, or should be. However, on any given list, if logical, the following figures will be found": Nelson Mandela, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Paul Robeson, and Angela Davis. Abu-Jamal’s heroes for an audience with a "wealth of perspectives" included a narrow range of racial separatists, two Lenin Peace Prize winners, a Stalin Peace Prize recipient, and a few advocates of the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Save Mandela, most of those on Abu-Jamal’s list might only find popularity among Communist Party members or anti-white racists — or, as he correctly deduced, Antioch graduates.

A half-mile from the commencement, Maureen Faulkner, widow of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner, held a ceremony for her husband. Abu-Jamal supporters, appalled that his victim’s family was speaking out, crashed the memorial service. "I’m happy he killed that cop!" Mrs. Faulkner was interrupted as she spoke about her husband. "Free Mumia! Whether he’s guilty or innocent," another masked student clad in black shouted, as cameras rolled and hundreds looked on in disgust. "F**k you! All racist pigs deserve to die!" one of the self-proclaimed anarchists screamed.

Things had grown very strange, however, long before graduation day came.

Upon hearing over a month earlier of Antioch’s plans to honor her husband’s murderer, Maureen Faulkner attempted to speak with Antioch president Bob Devine. The phone calls she made to Devine were not returned. She did, however, receive an impersonal letter from him that looked eerily familiar. Last year, she had read a similar letter from June Jervis, president of Evergreen State College, which had also honored Abu-Jamal at commencement. Looking at both letters side by side, she saw that whole paragraphs of Devine’s correspondence had been purloined from Jervis’s note. The school president’s plagiarism would be the first in a series of lies by school officials.

"As educators," Devine wrote in the weeks leading to the commencement, "it is our responsibility to provide an environment where widely varying points of view can be expressed and to engage people in the debate." In further defense of the invitation to the convicted cop killer, he added, "Having spent a lifetime engaging in first amendment issues, one thought has stayed with me throughout: the first amendment is for the speech we most abhor, not for that with which we agree."

Devine, who presides over a repressive speech code and a de facto ban on conservative speakers, would continually betray his newfound love of a free marketplace of ideas.

Accuracy in Academia, the organization I direct, secured meeting space to hold a "teach-in" outlining Abu-Jamal’s guilt. A day later, after our intentions were known, I received a call from Jamie Holster, director of the school’s dining services. "I hate to tell you this," she disclosed, but an oversight was made and the meeting space was really "all booked." A week later another administrator confirmed that Antioch’s story about having no space was a lie. "Our priority is commencement. It’s not about having lots and lots of debate." With that she informed me that Antioch was a private college and was justified in denying us a place to meet. If we wanted to hold a forum, she advised, we might be able to hold it off campus. Philadelphia radio host Michael Smerconish’s efforts to host his program at Antioch ended with similar results, forcing him to simulcast his show from an off-campus bar. Maureen Faulkner held a public meeting off campus to discuss the case with the Antioch community. Not one student attending.

In the wake of the bad publicity over its one-sidedness, Antioch officials claimed to have issued an invitation to Daniel Faulkner’s widow to present her side of the story at a school sponsored "teach-in." Maureen Faulkner found it strange that the invitation was for an event that was scheduled for the only time that school officials knew for certain she could not attend. Weeks earlier she had announced that she would be leading a demonstration against the school. Antioch’s event strangely coincided with that protest. The timing caused Faulkner to characterize the invitation as a publicity stunt that could only serve to undermine her protest and allow Antioch to dishonestly claim that they had made an effort to include opposing viewpoints. Antioch’s "teach-in" was held the morning of graduation, featuring only speakers supporting the "Free Mumia" movement.

Among Antioch faculty and administrators, the "widely varying points of view" that President Devine spoke of never materialized. If there was an opponent of hosting a convicted murderer, he dared not speak. The conformity of opinion among professors and school officials also pervaded the student body — with one brave exception.

Shortly before graduation, senior Kevin Franck posted 40 fliers around campus simply containing the words, "Do You Know Who Daniel Faulkner Was?" Franck aimed at reminding his fellow students that the man their commencement speaker killed had a name. Within half an hour, 38 of the 40 fliers were defaced or ripped down. Many of the defaced fliers, which Franck carried with him in a folder prior to graduation, contained vile scribblings that disparaged the fallen officer. Dean of Students Scott Warren could only respond by mumbling, "You can’t control every individual on campus."

Was it Franck or the vandals that Warren lamented not being able to control?

Franck was guilty of treason against Antioch’s official ideology again at graduation, where he had previously been selected to be one of a number of students making remarks. "I am sorry," Franck said of his school’s embarrassing choice. Franck noted the irony that it is because of people like Daniel Faulkner that Antioch has the freedom to host such a controversial speaker. "Mr. Faulkner, like so many of his colleagues, offered the ultimate sacrifice for liberty and freedom," Franck declared to an unreceptive audience. Finally, the graduating senior asked for a moment of silence for the dead officer. There followed fits of manufactured coughing and perhaps the loudest moment of silence in history.

So much for tolerance, civility, sensitivity, and the various other politically correct watchwords preached at Antioch.

Antioch College is an insular world in which professors preach a cartoon Marxism that is parroted by students and affirmed by classmates. Introduce a perspective that challenges their assigned worldview and students turn tail as if they’ve never encountered differing opinions. And at Antioch, they probably haven’t.

Torn-down fliers, banned "teach-ins," shouting down a dead policeman’s widow — what was the Antioch community so afraid of? Perhaps it was the truth.

Shortly before 4 a.m. in a seedy part of Philadelphia on December 9, 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal fired five shots at Daniel Faulkner, hitting him once in the back and then finally in the face. The officer had the misfortune of pulling over Abu-Jamal’s brother for driving the wrong way down a one-way street. A failed radio journalist, Abu-Jamal drove a cab for a living at the time he was arrested. Abu-Jamal was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in 1982. Since that time more than a dozen judges presiding over numerous appeals have denied all motions to reverse the unanimous decision by a jury of twelve.

Five eyewitnesses — including three people who identified him at the scene — provided testimony implicating Abu-Jamal as the murderer. "I saw Jamal standing over [Faulkner] and firing some more shots into him," eyewitness Robert Chobert testified. "I know who shot the cop and I ain’t going to forget it." Cynthia White testified that Abu-Jamal "came running out of the parking lot on Locust Street. He had a handgun in his hand. He fired the gun at the police officer about four or five times. The police officer fell to the ground. I started screaming." As she stared at the defendant, she added: "There’s no doubt: it’s him."

When police arrived at the scene, the on-duty cab driver was wearing a holster, sported a chest wound from a return round from Faulkner’s service weapon, and lunged for his gun. A Charter Arms revolver registered in Abu-Jamal’s name, which he purchased legally in 1979, was found a few feet from him at the crime scene. The five-shot revolver contained five spent .38 caliber "Plus P" shells. The round retrieved from Faulkner’s brain was of that same high-velocity variety, manufactured by the same company. The fatal bullet had eight rightward-turning grooves, matching identical striations within the barrel of Abu-Jamal’s cheap handgun.

Five additional witnesses report that Abu-Jamal admitted killing Faulkner. Perhaps most damning for the former radio commentator are the words of Phillip Bloch, an anti-death-penalty activist who became friends with Abu-Jamal while working on a prison-outreach program. Bloch reports that the death-row inmate admitted to him that he killed Faulkner and that he regretted doing so.

As he’s done for the last 18-and-a-half years, Abu-Jamal remained completely silent in his Antioch speech about the events surrounding his murder of Daniel Faulkner. His six-minute commencement harangue praising the "class suicide" and "work on behalf of the oppressed" of Angela Davis, Nelson Mandela, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and Ella Baker ended with Abu-Jamal counseling the Class of 2000 to "Show your admiration by becoming them."

Long after the tape of Abu-Jamal’s voice was shut off, befuddled demonstrators wondered why — particularly after two Antioch students had been gunned down in Costa Rica this semester — the school honored a murderer. The truth, unfortunately, is that Antioch could probably not have selected a more fitting commencement speaker to trumpet its values.

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