Earlier this year, graduates at Rutgers University missed an opportunity to hear a commencement address by Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser (2001-2004) and Secretary of State (2005-2009) who is one of the most influential and intellectual black women of our lifetime.

Rice decided not to speak because of protests by some students and faculty members who felt that Ms. Rice, while working in the Bush administration, helped mislead the public about the reasons for the war in Iraq.Rice handled the Rutger's incident with class, explaining that commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families and she didn't want to detract from the day's festivities.While the reaction to Rice by some in the Rutgers community was disgusting, this week's news out of Goddard College about its commencement speaker just as sickening. Students at the Vermont school selected Mumia Abu-Jamal, who brutally executed Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, as their speaker this Sunday.Originally sentenced to death, Abu-Jamal had his sentence reduced on appeal to life imprisonment. He is even allowed to have his own radio show from prison.Goddard's interim president Bob Kenny said in a statement that "choosing Mumia as a commencement speaker shows how the newest class 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."Many of us, including Maureen Faulkner, whose husband was the officer gunned down by Abu-Jamal, believe the former Black Panther radical forfeited his rights to free speech when he murdered a police officer in the line of duty.We also agree with with Faulkner's widow that it's despicable and seems like our justice system allows murderers to continue to have a voice over the public airwaves and at college commencement.She pointed out that last April a lesson plan posted on the Oakland (California) Unified School District's website asked students to draw parallels between late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Abu-Jamal. We agree with Faulkner that any student exercise that brings any attention to a radical and militant who murdered a police officer is a travesty.The public should be outraged that tax dollars pay for such idiocy.It's time society, especially our legal and educational system, stopped giving murderers like Abu-Jamal any voice. The real victim of this story, Maureen Faulkner, sums it up best when she says that people need to start realizing that there's right and wrong in this world.By Jim Zbickeditor@tnonline.com