The Patriot Post® · Brown U Honors a Cop Killer

To cite examples of the rank leftism in our nation’s colleges and universities is to shoot fish in a barrel: There’s simply no sport in it.

But, still, some matters demand to be called out.

Such is the case with the Ivy League’s Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, which recently acquired “a trove of records, writings and artwork from Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political activist and journalist who spent decades on death row for the shooting death of a Philadelphia police officer in the 1980s.”

That police officer was Danny Faulkner, but we needn’t wonder whether even a single administrator at Brown has taken a knee and said his name.

“Political activist and journalist.” Those are odd terms the AP uses to describe a man who in 1981 walked up behind Officer Faulkner on a Philadelphia street and shot him in the back during a traffic stop, then shot him a few more times as he writhed on the ground, then finally shot him point-blank between the eyes. How about “murdering dog”? Or at least “cop killer”?

And “acquired” isn’t our word; it’s the word of the Associated Press. A Brown spokesperson says the collection was acquired through a trust and that it includes more than 60 boxes of material that Abu-Jamal accumulated from 1981 to 2020. We prefer the word “purchased,” though, because it’s more honest than “acquired.” The price, of course, wasn’t disclosed — it’s “confidential,” says the university — because that would help drive home just how unseemly such a blood-money transaction is. But you can bet Brown paid a pretty penny to Abu-Jamal for these priceless possessions.

As the AP continues: “Brown has also obtained related personal papers from Johanna Fernández, a Brown graduate and longtime advocate for Abu-Jamal whom he has entrusted with storing his papers. Together, the materials will anchor a new collecting focus at the university’s John Hay Library called ‘Voices of Mass Incarceration.’”

Why would one of our nation’s most prestigious universities honor this man? Has it run out of humans? Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 President John McNesby says this sordid affair “only revictimizes Maureen and the entire Faulkner family.”

Indeed, as McNesby continues: “It’s unconscionable that not one person from the university reached out to Maureen prior to this announcement.”

Conservative author and thinker Dennis Prager has often noted that the Left doesn’t create anything; it only destroys. “Everything the Left touches it ruins,” he wrote. And this is surely the case with Mumia Abu-Jamal and Brown University. The former destroyed the lives of a young policeman and his family, while the latter has done its share to destroy the once noble institution of higher education.

Here we should contrast the academy’s treatment not of a destroyer but of one of Western civilization’s great builders: Thomas Jefferson. Because the student newspaper of the university that Jefferson himself established, the University of Virginia, is now demanding that Jefferson’s name be removed from every last article on campus. As National Review reports:

The editorial board of the University of Virginia student newspaper — there is a reason “sophomoric” is a term of opprobrium — has decided that Thomas Jefferson’s name and likeness must be stripped from the university, writing: “Our physical environment — from statues to building names to Jefferson’s overwhelming presence — exalts people who held the same beliefs as the repugnant white supremacists in attendance at the ‘Unite the Right’ rally.”

This is a repugnant take, but not a surprising one, coming as it does from our next generation of journalists. As our Mark Alexander satirically wrote back in 2017, in the wake of the Charlottesville incident, which pitted statue-toppling leftists against those who would preserve our nation’s heritage, albeit with a small group of white supremacists thrown in for bad measure: “Perhaps they should just raze the entire campus and go home. Given that UVA was founded by a slave owner, should it be left standing as a monument to Jefferson’s legacy?”

Again, it’s instructive: Leftists build up the destroyers and tear down the builders. They can’t help it. It’s what they do.