From academia, an outpouring for Gates

From academia, an outpouring for Gates
July 27, 2009 05:12 PM

By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff


One week after the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates caused an international firestorm, the noted African-American scholar is receiving an outpouring of support from academia.

The leaders of Harvard's Association of Black Faculty, Administrators, and Fellows released a strongly worded letter this morning expressing outrage at Gates's arrest by a white Cambridge police sergeant for disorderly conduct, a charge that was dropped last week.

The letter, jointly written by the co-chairmen of the association -- law professor Ronald S. Sullivan, who directs the Criminal Justice Institute of Harvard Law School, and Robert Mitchell, assistant dean and communications director in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences -- said they "would like to add our voices to the chorus of outraged people responding to the unjustified, illegal, and unwarranted arrest that you were forced to endure.

"As black men, we know what racial profiling and stereotyping is all about,'' Sullivan and Mitchell wrote. "Moreover, we regret the serious affront to your dignity in respect of the booking process. . . Regrettably, your arrest demonstrates how vulnerable some in our community still are to police abuse of power.''

Gates was arrested after Sergeant James Crowley, responding to a call about a possible burglary at Gates’s home after Gates and his livery diver were seen pushing a broken door open, said the professor became verbally abusive during the investigation. Gates has said he did not yell at the officer and was only asking for his name and badge number to file a complaint.

In a phone interview today, Sullivan said that no matter whether outbursts actually occurred, "fits of language are not subject to criminal liability.''

more...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/from_academia_a.html

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no more he said she said

gates was polite, forthcoming, didnt do a damn thing wrong and crowley was all the problem

what happens witha liar

they cannot be believed anymore

Have the mimes weighed in?

Because there is clearly no such thing.

They shouldn't show sympathy for victims.

Academics shouldn't be defended, only police officers.

President Obama shouldn't have spoken up because his insticts were clearly wrong.

People shouldn't use alternate forms of expression, because there us only one acceptable way to express yourself.

All :sarcasm:

Lots of people are showing their true colors in this. Of course, the contempt academia holds for those who actually work for a living isn't unknown, it's just rarely spoken so clearly.

whole damn profession.

the man lied

he cannot not be believed. he cannot be trusted. he lack character. lie..... his word not longer counts

What a creep.

supported him.

And as a card carrying member of academia who in the past put in 18 hour days six days a week on a salary about equal to Crowley's, you are full of it.

Elite, hunh? Nice.

and hold office hours on my own time.

lol

Anti-intellectual swill from hell.

(Since a song is poetry set to music and all...)

The police acted stupidly.

Our president is very good at what he does. :)

:toast: :toast: :toast:

Ah well - it was a good run.

also rushed to condemn the alleged rapists in the duke (fake) rape case.

iow, people in academia are people, no less likely to kneejerk, ignore uncomfortable evidence, and support "their side" in a debate.

i would be surprised if they didn't rush to support gates.

it says little about whether they are right to do so.

if the majority of crowley's colleagues and cops in general rushed to support crowley, how much would that convince you that crowley was in the right?

think about it.

And, no, academia did not rush to support Gates because we have a working system of ethics and set about gathering facts instead. We aren't as likely as the Blue Wall to defend the indefensible. But thanks, anyway, for the thought.

but the idea that academics are less likely to kneejerk in support of their own, than cops is ludicrous.

as to the charge that crowley lied in his report. if , pursuant to due process, it is found that he did in fact lie about contacting this witness prior to contacting gates, in his report, than he should be fired.

my agency, and any agency with credibility, should have a zero tolerance towards such kinds of dishonesty. iow, if he lied in a police report like this, he should be fired. period.

You all are trained to circle the wagons.

So, no, not ludicrous at all.

And I hope enough of you are mad at this guy who abused your loyalty to send a message.

academics are just as likely to kneejerk to protect their own as cops are.

they are actually quite similar in a # of ways. tenure is very comparable ot police civil service protections.

academics and cops both set themselves apart in a # of ways from society at large.

they are both insular cultures, that seek to protect their own.

as somebody who has spent a fair amount of time in both worlds, i see much in common.

and i strongly disagree that academics are any less likely to circle the wagons than cops are.

No, it's not rubbish. With respect to raising questions, we couldn't be more opposite. And if you don't know that, I have to question whether you've ever sat in a roomful of academics picking each other apart. I have and for years and sometimes that picked apart person was me. lol

and maybe even do, but i am sorry, i don't agree with you. and fwiw, i have sat in a roomful of cops picking each other apart as well. for example, i and many other officers, think the columbine incident was the worst example of institutionalized cowardice i have ever heard of.

and of course, cops AMONGST their own are much more likely to be openly critical than when dealing wiht outsiders. this is also consistent with racial minorities, and other groups that perceive themselves as being a beleagured minority.

i have seen cops viciously and extensively pick apart every single decision cops make in debriefing sessions, and in critiquing various arrests, etc. you would be surprised.

we are never going to agree on this. i've spent WAY too much time amongst academics and cops to ignore the million points of data. in fact, i think it's fascinating how similar cops and academics are.

the primary difference is that cops have far more contact with the "real world" vs. academics. iow, the average beat cop spends a lot more time dealing with the 'real world' than your average academic.

from cop culture to the public is much more unified than what emerges from academia.

That I do believe. That makes perfect sense to me.

in the types of high profile incidents that cops are. the public, affected by the media, is going to have a lot more examples of cops "circling the wagons" than they are going to have with academics. the academic instances are few and far between ., that grab the public eye. ward churchill is one obvious example.

compare two cases. amadou diallo and louima (sp?).

one involved an apparent justified (imo) shooting of an innocent person. a CLASSIC lawful but awful shoot. no matter how good the cops are, given the hundreds of thousands of such contacts NYPD has in a year (in a force of well over 35k), you will always have such shoots even with well trained, well intentioned, officers. as a firearms instructor, and one who teaches aspects of defensive tactics, etc.i see this shooting through my lens of personal experience as well as forensic science, psychology, physiology, etc.

in other case, cops sodomized a guy with a broomstick. i never heard ONE cop say anything in support of these rapists, despite the fact that they were cops.

Pound for pound, you can't really compare the coverage.

But I still submit to you that our culture is organized around questioning each other where cop culture is not. And, even though I believe what you say about sessions where individuals come under fire, it's not really useful at some point for each or all cops to have the whole group try to paper over problems. Because those problems don't go away all by themselves. They come back and bite you and others. The group habit makes it more difficult for one person to raise a question or to point out a problem.

groups that see themselves as insular, misunderstood, etc. minorities: cops, racial minorities, academics, etc. tend to have certain aspects of culture in common.

i could make the same arguments about island cultures. i always found it funny that on martha's vineyard (and riffed upon in the movie jaws, set on the fictional amity island, but filmed on the vineyard), that if you weren't born on the island, you could never become an "islander".

these groups (cops, academics, etc.) have a similar attitude "the general public doesn't really understand us". they naturally tend to be insular and self-protective. heck, this is very true of other racial groups, especially the chinese, who formed insular chinatowns, and even had internal groups ot mete out justice within their community, since they didn;'t trust the outsider court system etc.

i just wish you could witness "cop culture" at a roll call. in such an environment, where we are "amongst our own" we are just as nitpicky, critical, etc. as academics are within their own culture, etc. but that IS different than the face we present to the outside world. but again, i think that is similar to how other subcultures are also.

cops have (moreso than academics even) VERY unique experiences, very stressful experiences (look at our suicide rates), and literally live in a different world.

i go home to a nice cozy upper middle class home in a quiet low crime neighborhood, but i spend my duty hours in a TOTALLY different environment that many people do not and cannot understand.

i strongly suggest to people that they do ride along with a local PD to get a flavor of what the real world of a cop is like.

i did one , just out of college, with LAPD and it completely forced me to reassess my viewpoint of cops. what i saw was simply very different than what i had been told.

And while all subcultures have the features of subcultures, they also have their own identities. And I still point back to academia not holding a press conference to support Gates while the union did for Jim Crowley.

Logic.

Crowley didn't know he was going to come into contact with a major league asshole that day. His experience was random.

Gates may not have known that he was going to run into a cop that day, but he did know that he was going to be a major league asshole when he got the opportunity.

Crowley has a career in which he has apparently dealt fairly with black people, so fairly he teaches the class in it.

Gates has made a career out of the wrongs done to black people. And as soon as about half of white America voted to elect a black man to the presidency, the question started surfacing in various forms: Are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (and by extension Henry Louis Gates Jr.) still relevant? His self image, if not his career, relies on the answer to that question remaining "Yes."

I guess everyone makes mistakes. It would appear that Gates' Inkwell Foundation made some.

you know you are making an impact. that's one of those attacks that is just an attempt to squelch debate. it has no content, just name calling. "ooh, that's just a right wing talking point" is the modern equivalent of "heretic. burn him"

i get the "right wing talking point" crap all the time, for example, when i defend the 2nd amendment. iow, advocate for people's civil rights.

i don't give a flying fuck that more right wingers happen to support the 2nd than do left wingers. i support or oppose issues based on reason, experience, principles, etc. not whose "side" i am jumping on.

incident, not the rapists themselves. (I am talking about the signed publicized statement, not any individual comments that might have occurred.) This fact was greatly misrepresented in the press. Now whether that was a good idea for the professors to do or not, it's not quite the same thing, and it's not exactly analogous to this situation. The fact of the matter is that it is clear that their colleague should never have been arrested.

who would question or chalenge Crowley.

Just like Crowley changed the channel to "two black men" when he realized how badly he screwed up. It must be something you learn in cop school.

they repeatedly assumed the "rapists" were guilty. this was DESPITE the massive amounts of data that suggested the "victim" was full of crap and was either lying or seriously deluded.

as to the gates case. if the officer lied in his report, he should be fired. period.

i have zero tolerance for lying in police reports or court (and this applies even to clinton fwiw).

if he lied, he should be fired.

that is tangential to the issue as to whether gates should have been arrested.

based on what i have seen from the fact pattern, *i* would not have arrested gates. however,i believe the arrest was facially valid, if imprudent.

iow, i see no evidence it was an unlawful arrest. it meets the "recklessly creating a risk" standard of the MA disorderly conduct statute. i'd be interested to hear what the other citizen witnesses have to say vis a vis gates' behavior on the porch.

totally ok where you would not even think there should be an arrest.

but it has to be the zero tolerance

of whether the arrest was facially valid. it affects crowley's credibility, but like i said, there were 7-8 civilian witnesses who witnessed gates behavior on the porch. furthermore, gates himself has corroborated a fair amount of what crowley claimed happened.

but at least we can both agree that if crowley lied on his report, he should be fired.

i believe in progressive discipline. iow, many offenses, even including excessive force should not result in termination, unless there are significant past violation. there is a huge difference between a mistake and.or going too far in the heat of the moment (cops are human) vs. a purposeful intent to LIE on a police report. the latter is done calmly and with ample opportunity to choose to do the right thing.

my agency thinks that way. we have officers who have been disciplined (but not fired) for various offenses, but we have a zero tolerance policy on dishonesty. which is as it should be

about witness statement. not holding you to a fact but.... (just opinion).... he walked up to the woman, she says i am the one that made the call. he says wait here until i get back (or something close). and never came back

does that still meet your meter of him lying on statement. or does he have an out cause he said that sentence to her, even though that is not what he put in his report

we (and the law) makes a distinction between perjury and mistakes, etc.

i'm just saying if he outright LIED iow made a statement he KNEW to be false, but made it anyways, in a police report, he should be fired.

it's really that simple.

it's simply not acceptable for a LEO to do that.

investigators would need to take a detailed statement from the woman and then (remember, that just because she claims X does not mean X is true) compare it to what the officer wrote, what the physical and other evidence, supports, etc. and then if there is clear evidence the officer lied - fire him.

and yes, by lied i mean he knowingly stated a falsehood in his police report.

Composed of statements collected from print and students.

Again, I don't think it is particularly analogous to what the faculty have done here in their support for Gates.

Police sticking together = whining.

Gotch'ya.

:eyes:

Charges were dropped.

Evidence more and more pointing to police misconduct.

Charges were dropped.

Oh, also, did I mention the charges were dropped?

Anyway, I don't see where defending a colleague against racist abuse of power is "fighting the man." He never should have been arrested.

from their experiences.

:rofl:

But, you were close.

The black faculty, administrators and fellows at Harvard do not approve of Crowley's conduct and do support Gates in this matter.

It's important to note that such well known and respected blacks see the Crowley misconduct for what it was, and don't make excuses for him.

Quoted from the OP:

The letter, jointly written by the co-chairmen of the association -- law professor Ronald S. Sullivan, who directs the Criminal Justice Institute of Harvard Law School, and Robert Mitchell, assistant dean and communications director in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences -- said they "would like to add our voices to the chorus of outraged people responding to the unjustified, illegal, and unwarranted arrest that you were forced to endure.

"As black men, we know what racial profiling and stereotyping is all about,'' Sullivan and Mitchell wrote. "Moreover, we regret the serious affront to your dignity in respect of the booking process. . . Regrettably, your arrest demonstrates how vulnerable some in our community still are to police abuse of power.''