University removes Common (a hip-hop artist) as graduation speaker amid police whining

So Academy Award-winning hip-hop artists in NJ must choose: 1) gag yourself for fear you'll be, you know, "not invited into polite company". OR 2) remain authentic, and suffer the indignity of not getting invited to stuff?



University removes Common as graduation speaker amid police outcry
Kean University spokeswoman said school will ‘pursue other options’ after state police complaint over hip-hop artists’s song about woman convincted of killing officer
AP via The Guardian * Wednesday 1 April 2015

New Jersey’s Kean University has cancelled hip-hop artist Common as commencement speaker after police voiced concerns over a song about a woman convicted of killing a police officer who fled to Cuba.

The school announced the Academy Award winner’s selection on Monday, but said on its social media sites on Tuesday night that he would not be the speaker.

A university spokeswoman, Susan Kayne, told the Record newspaper the announcement was made prematurely.

Common won an Academy Award for composing the song Glory for the 2014 film Selma.

The film’s director, Ava DuVernay, tweeted #Assata in support of the rapper.

“The students expressed interest in Common because he composed the Oscar-winning song Glory with our prior commencement speaker John Legend,” Kayne said. “While we respect his talent, Kean is pursuing other speaker options.”

New Jersey state police were troubled by the choice because of lyrics in Common’s 2000 recording A Song for Assata. The song is about Joanne Chesimard, who goes by the name Assata Shakur, and was convicted in 1977 of killing trooper Werner Foerster in 1973. She escaped from prison and has been living in Cuba as a fugitive.

The song describes the shootout and the treatment meted out to Shakur in prison: “A call, one cot, no window, facing hell/Put in the basement of a prison with all males” and concludes “Assata had been convicted of a murder she couldn’t have done/Medical evidence shown she couldn’t have shot the gun.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/01/new-jersey-kean-university-common-commencement-speaker