A Teachable Moment

The City College of New York wants to honor a fugitive who murdered a New Jersey State Trooper.

These days, Joanne Chesimard is known as Assata Shakur, but she's had dozens of other aliases in a life on the run.
She now lives in Cuba, a guest of dictator Fidel Castro, and carries a $1 million price tag for her capture and return to prison in the U.S.

She's a convicted cop killer who left behind a lifetime of pain for the family of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster.

But in at least one corner of City College, Chesimard is a hero, honored and remembered.

She gets a building named after one of her nom de guerres. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but was freed in a brazen prison break. She shares the naming rights with another convicted terrorist who was a member of the FALN, who also managed to break out of custody while being treated at Belleview Hospital for injuries sustained when a bomb he was working on blew off his fingers. He too is living in Cuba.

Ward Churchill gave a speech last nite at the New School in NYC, and was received with a standing ovation.

In a two-hour speech at the New School titled "Sterilizing History: The Fabrication of Innocent Americans," delivered without notes, Mr. Churchill traced what he called a pattern of mass murder as American foreign policy from the time of the country's inception to the events of September 11, 2001, which he said the country was essentially asking for.

Mr. Churchill also called the president of the New School, Robert Kerrey, a former senator of Nebraska, a "mass murder and serial killer to boot" for having served in Thanh Phong, Vietnam. Mr. Churchill also served in Vietnam, an act for which he said he has spent the rest of his life apologizing.

Mr. Churchill received cheers from the audience for comparing Mr. Kerrey to the serial killer Charles Manson. "That's who you've got moral equivalency in the president's chair at this institution," Mr. Churchill said. "How about a cage rather than a president's suite?"

Mr. Churchill was invited to the New School by a student group, the Women of Color. The university was not involved in the invitation.

"We brought him here because he offers a framework in which we can conceptualize the struggles our community is dealing with," a junior at the New School, Jamila Thompson, said. "A person's work should be engaged critically, and his work allows us to build broad-based networks with Native Americans, Latinos, and anti-racist whites."

Never mind the fact that Churchill was a fraud and whose comments were being made less than 2 miles from Ground Zero where 2,749 people were murdered by Islamic terrorists. He even managed to get a standing ovation attacking Kerrey because of his service to the nation.

Then, there's the French movement to honor another cop-killer, Mumia Abu Jamal, who killed Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner 25 years ago. That somehow qualifies him to have a street named after him in Paris.

What do all these incidents have in common? These are causes célèbres among the leftists and Hollywood elites. All are leftists honoring leftists who not only make excuses for violent acts, but in two of the cases, actually killed members of law enforcement and were convicted for their crimes.

In Churchill's case, he was found to be an academic fraud whose comments on 9/11 are not only outlandish, but revolting and nonsensical all at the same time. He blames the victims for the 9/11 attacks and excuses the Islamists who did carry out the attacks.

Not only is the moral equivalency appalling and pervasive, but supporters engage in revisionist history to whitewash the facts and circumstances of the incidents in the first place. Indeed, the CCNY officials claim that she was nothing more than a black-activist who was arrested on trumped up charges. The New Jersey State Troopers, and the judicial system, see things quite differently.

UPDATE:
Fixed typo above.

UPDATE:
New York Magazine notes that some are less than thrilled at the CCNY building naming. Really? Can't imagine much of an outcry from the halls of academia. Oh wait, you're referring to law enforcement and anyone else who bothered to look at the history of the people that CCNY decided to honor with the building naming. Others taking note of CCNY's efforts to honor a convicted cop killer and terrorist who remains a fugitive from the law: Ace of Spades, Black Informant, JammieWearingFool, and Ari's Blog.

As a counter to those who have their head screwed on straight, I point you in this direction (where cops are pigs and convicted cop-killers are freedom fighters).

UPDATE:
Sister Toldjah weighs in on the situation at CCNY and the Ward Churchill speech at New School. FoxNews has a statement from the student group that put the name on the community center at CCNY, and they're standing by their decision to honor Shakur; proclaiming her innocence. Sorry, but a court of law found her guilty. She escaped prison - another criminal act, and has been a fugitive ever since. Some of those blogs defending this nonsense claim that the media outlets and PBAs are simply trying to divert attention from the series of police involved shootings, including the incident where Sean Bell was killed in a hail of gunfire (that investigation continues). Kowabunga sees the inmates running the asylum at CCNY.

UPDATE:
I am reprinting the comment posted associated with this entry here - it clarifies some of the facts in the CCNY situation and was posted by the Director of Public Relations for the City College of New York, Ellis Simon. It also corrects an assertion I had made in stating that it was a building named after Shakur when it was only one room within the building:

I am the director of public relations for The City College of New York. For the record, no building at City College is named for these two individuals; it is a room inside a building that carries their name, not that this makes it any less grevious.

The naming was done over 15 years ago by students with the organizations that occupy the room.

However, all designations and namings of facilities at colleges with in the CUNY (City University of New York) system, of which City College is a part, must be approved by the University's Board of Trustees.

There is no record of such approval ever having been granted. Hence, the naming is unauthorized and City College is moving expeditiously to take the appropriate steps to dismantle this unauthorized and inappropriate signage.

FoxNews is now reporting (no link yet) that the student groups will try to block the CCNY efforts to remove the signage.