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THE OTHER GATES FOUNDATION In 2005, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., known to all as "Skip," set up the nonprofit Inkwell Foundation, named after a famous beach/gathering place for African-Americans on Martha's Vineyard. Skip talked about the foundation in a recent interview with Martha's Vineyard magazine and touted it when he launched his for-profit business, AfricanDNA.com, last year. "The precedent-setting site is the only company in the field of genetic genealogy that will provide African Americans with family tree research in addition to DNA testing," its initial press release declared, adding that "a percentage of all profits will be...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A prominent black Harvard University scholar has accepted an invitation to have a beer with President Barack Obama and the white police officer who arrested him in a racially charged case. Professor Henry Louis Gates said Saturday he was willing to have a peace-making beer with Obama and Cambridge, Massachusetts, police Sgt. James Crowley.

JERUSALEM – The lawyer representing Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor at the center of a national race controversy, was a mentor of both Barack and Michelle Obama and served on the president's black advisory council. Charles Ogletree Jr., himself a Harvard University professor, is closely linked to the Black Panthers and to radical black ideology. He is a key member of the reparations movement and once pursued the possibility of bringing a class action lawsuit to win reparations for descendants of African slaves. "I met Barack when he arrived at Harvard Law School in fall of 1988. He...

This is so drenched in common sense, one wonders from where Obama gets his advice.

Here is video from this morning of a press conference held by Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Officers on the controversy surrounding the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Sgt. James Crowley - the arresting officer - was present at the press conference but did not speak. Instead, officer after officer, as well as other police officials and police union representatives came to the microphone and spoke in support of Sgt. Crowley and called for President Barack Obama to "apologize" for his remarks that the police "acted stupidly" in the case. The official who led the conference said President Obama...

President Obama’s diatribe against the Cambridge cops about the arrest of his “friend”, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates contains perhaps more than the so-called Mainstream Media is reporting. In fact, Barack Obama had his own ongoing ‘problem’ with the Cambridge police while he attended Harvard Law School. As first reported in March 2007 by the Somerville Times, Harvard law student Barack Obama accumulated 17 unpaid parking tickets between 1989-1991 - and never paid the fines ad associated penalties totaling $375 until a few weeks before announcing his presidential campaign. In other words, as a practicing lawyer in Chicago, he allowed...

From the moment a police officer dons that uniform, he/she becomes a symbol of authority, and it becomes obvious very quickly that most people in a free country resent authority. It could be the guy who gets pulled over for speeding or passing a red light; it could be the guy who's clobbering his wife during a family dispute, or it could be a guy who breaking into a residence that turns out to be his. Although these are situations in which the police must take action, their authority will usually be resented. It's the type of job in which...

Used to be, the cops and the president were on the same side. That’s before we got change we could believe in. Now the cops are on their own. Now officers can do their duty, according to the law and their training, and – without even knowing all the facts – the president of the United States will call them “stupid.” More specifically, he will say they “acted stupidly.” Which is pretty stupid in itself. The nation’s chief law-enforcement official has taken on the nation’s law-enforcement officers. And all across the country, some folks are asking themselves: If the president...

BOSTON — Many police officers across the country have a message for President Barack Obama: Get all the facts before criticizing one of our own. Obama's public criticism that Cambridge officers "acted stupidly" when they arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. could make it harder for police to work with people of color, some officers said Thursday. It could even set back the progress in race relations that helped Obama become the nation's first African-American president, they said. "What we don't need is public safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves," said David Holway, president of the International...

BOSTON — Many police officers across the country have a message for President Barack Obama: Get all the facts before criticizing one of our own. Obama's public criticism that Cambridge officers "acted stupidly" when they arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. could make it harder for police to work with people of color, some officers said Thursday. It could even set back the progress in race relations that helped Obama become the nation's first African-American president, they said. "What we don't need is public safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves," said David Holway, president of the International...

Though now scrubbed from the Boston Globe website where it was originally posted, what appears to be a .pdf copy of the incident report (#9005127) filed by the officer involved in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Gates is available online. Before being swept up in the indignant frenzy being whipped up over this supposed outrage, it's worth perusing.

A Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer said Thursday he will "never apologize" about how he handled the arrest of prominent black Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Sgt. Jim Crowley said he has nothing to apologize for in regards to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. "That apology will never come from me as Jim Crowley, it won't come from me as sergeant in the Cambridge Police Department," Sgt. James Crowley told Boston radio station WEEI. "Whatever anybody else chooses to do in the name of the city of Cambridge or the Cambridge Police Department which are beyond my...

Harvard professor Henry Gates says "it was the fault of a policeman who couldn't stand a black man standing up for his rights right in his face. And that's what I did. And I would do the same thing exactly again."

The video above shows President Obama at his press conference last night slamming the Cambridge, Massachusetts police for "acting stupidly" in arresting a Harvard Professor at his home after he had to break into his own house because he had locked himself outside. Someone called in a possible burglary, and when the police responded, they reportedly asked to see his identification. Obama says the professor showed his identification, but other reports seem to say he refused and then accused the officer of racism. The video below shows the arresting officer refusing to get into the details of the case, but...

[‘I said, are you doing this because I’m a black man in America? Are you doing this because you’re a white police officer and I am a black man?” - Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recounting a conversation with his arresting officer in Cambridge.] - italics So what if the cop had been BLACK? What if Sgt. James Crowley happened to be one of Cambridge’s 41 black police officers rather than bearing as he does the affliction of whiteness? If a black police sergeant responded to the call of a possible breaking and entering, and asked Gates for some form...

At Harvard University, they have lowered thermostats during the winter months from 72 degrees to 68 degrees. Hot breakfasts are no longer served on weekdays at undergraduate residential houses. Instead of bacon, poached eggs, and waffles, students have to get by on cold ham, cottage cheese, cereal, and fruit. These are just some steps Harvard is taking to battle serious financial problems. Part of the blame belongs to President Obama's top economic adviser Larry Summers. In a story for Vanity Fair, Nina Munk details the crisis. Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering...

Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, retained a lawyer. Why? He claims cops in Cambridge, Mass., racially profiled him. Here's what happened. Gates, "one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars," writes The Boston Globe, was arrested about 1 p.m. at his home near Harvard Square by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. "The incident," says the Globe, "raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling." "Friends of Gates," writes the Globe, "said he was already in his home when police arrived. He...

Henry Louis Gates Jr, America's most famous black scholar, has accused local police of racism after he was arrested while trying to break into his own home near Harvard University. According to a police report, officers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were called to the house on Thursday afternoon after a woman said she had seen a man "wedging his shoulder into the front door as to pry the door open". According to police, an officer ordered the man to identify himself and Prof Gates refused. He allegedly began calling the officer a racist, repeatedly saying: "This is what happens to black...

This was originally from the Telegraph.co.uk but the PDF file was omitted or purged. It was then posted by member GQuagmire here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2298940/posts http://www.amnation.com/vfr/Police%20report%20on%20Gates%20arrest.PDF

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates said this morning that he has not ruled out filing a lawsuit over his arrest last week. “Oh yeah, I’m considering a lawsuit, sure,” the noted scholar told a Globe reporter a day after authorities agreed to drop a disorderly conduct charge against him. “Wouldn’t you?” ... On Tuesday, black leaders continued to condemn the actions of a police sergeant who handcuffed the African-American professor. Gates extended an unusual offer to the officer: in exchange for an apology, personal tutoring sessions on the history of racism in America.... “I believe the officer should apologize to...

President Obama's unwillingness to allow the American public to see his records at Harvard Law School prevents resolution of a continuing controversy over whether radical Islamic influences promoted his admission and financed his legal education there. In an appearance on the New York-produced "Inside City Hall" television show, octogenarian Harlem lawyer Percy Sutton – whose clients included Malcolm X – explained that Islamic radical Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, "one of the world's wealthiest men," asked him to write a letter of recommendation to Harvard Law School for then relatively unknown Barack Obama. In the video, Sutton says he was introduced...

An acclaimed black US scholar accused a police officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts of racism for investigating reports of a break-in as he entered his own house, after which he was arrested, police records have shown. Henry Louis Gates, 58, considered a preeminent professor of African American studies at the prestigious Harvard University, was charged with disorderly conduct. Police cited his "loud and tumultuous behavior." Gates was seen by a passing woman to be attempting entry to the front door of his house -- which was damaged -- along with another black man, according to the police report from July 16....

BOSTON – Supporters of a prominent Harvard University black scholar who was arrested at his own home by police responding to a report of a break-in say he is the victim of racial profiling. --------- snip "Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him," the officer wrote.

The Rev. Al Sharpton is taking up the banner of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., accusing Cambridge cops of racism for arresting Gates, and vowing to stand by his side at an arraignment next month. “I’ve heard of driving while black, and I’ve heard of shopping while black. But I’ve never heard of living in a home while black,” said Sharpton, a New York minister who has made a national name for himself by seizing on cases of alleged racism. Gates, 58, an acclaimed Harvard University academic and black-history documentarian, was arrested Thursday after an incident at his Cambridge...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received more than five million dollars last year from the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and collected 2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street firms benefiting from government bailout money, The New York Times reported Saturday. Citing new financial information about top officials in the administration of Barack Obama, the newspaper said Summers had made 40 paid appearances, including a speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, for which he was paid 135,000 dollars. Summers, a former president of Harvard University and treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, leads...

The White House has just released excerpts of chief economic adviser Larry Summers' speech on the economy today. Summers, per the excerpts, will also discuss what the administration hopes the economy will look like once it recovers. "The rebuilt American economy must be more export-oriented and less consumption-oriented, more environmentally oriented and less fossil-energy-oriented, more bio- and software-engineering-oriented and less financial-engineering-oriented, more middle-class-oriented and less oriented to income growth that disproportionately favors a very small share of the population."

BOSTON — Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation's pre-eminent black scholar, is accusing Cambridge police of racism after he was arrested while trying to force open the locked front door of his home near Harvard University. Cambridge police were called to the home Thursday afternoon after a woman reported seeing a man "wedging his shoulder into the front door as to pry the door open," according to a police report. An officer ordered the man to identify himself, and Gates refused, according to the report. Gates began calling the officer a racist and said repeatedly, "This is what happens to...

Harvard professor Gates arrested at Cambridge home July 20, 2009 By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling. Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.

...On Wednesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin implied that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to uphold the Second Amendment was revolutionary: “When I was in law school...the idea that you had a Second Amendment right to a gun was considered preposterous....But the Supreme Court [in Heller]...said that...individuals have a personal right to bear arms.”...Anchor Wolf Blitzer raised the Second Amendment issue with Toobin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and the others on their panel analyzing the hearings.... [and] asked...what were the nominee’s “positions, specifically on the federal obligation to support the Second Amendment, as opposed to local communities..?” The CNN...analyst...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Harvard University announced 275 job cuts on Tuesday, the latest cost-cutting measure at the world's richest university after the financial crisis triggered big losses in its multibillion-dollar endowment. The Ivy League school took the action to meet budget constraints caused by an estimated 30 percent fall in its endowment for its 2009 fiscal year, ending June 30.

Universities serve as society’s critics and conscience. We are meant to be producers not just of knowledge but of doubt—of understanding rooted in skepticism and constant questioning, not in the unchallenged sway of accepted wisdom. More than perhaps any other institution in our society, universities are about the long view and about the critical perspectives that derive from not being owned exclusively by the present. For nearly four centuries now, Harvard has looked beyond the immediately useful, relevant, and comfortable to cast current assumptions into the crucible of other places and other times. Universities are so often judged by their...

Harvard University announced this morning that it plans to lay off 275 staff members as the college grapples with budget pressures caused by a precipitous endowment decline.

Cambridge — An over-confident doe seen bounding through Harvard Square accidentally impaled itself while jumping over a wrought iron fence Tuesday morning. According to Cambridge Deputy Fire Chief Jack Gelinas, both police and fire responded to the front gate of an old historic church off Brattle Street around 7 a.m. after several calls from residents in the neighborhood. The fence the animal gored herself on encircles a historic Harvard Square cemetery known as The Old Cambridge Burying Ground next to Christ Church. The scene was not pretty, Gelinas said.

The president without a country Posted: June 06, 2009 "We're no longer a Christian nation." – President Barack Obama, June 2007 "America has been arrogant." – President Barack Obama "After 9/11, America didn't always live up to her ideals." – President Barack Obama "You might say that America is a Muslim nation." – President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009 Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president … I keep wondering what country he believes he's president of.

Yale may have turned a similar departmental chair down, but longtime football rival Harvard University is set to proceed with the establishment of a chair for visiting scholars of GLBT studies. [Snip] Other critics had little use for either history or theory. At conservative chat site Free Republic.com, the academic issues took a back seat to but the sexual stereotypes that flew thick and fast. The site’s enlightened discourse followed a parenthetical exclamation of, "Ha!" after the NY Times headline, which read, "Harvard to Endow Chair in Gay Studies," as well as a photo of an upside-down stool accompanied...

Boston - Ivy League university Harvard is to endow a professorship of gay, lesbian and transgender studies, the organisers have said. The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus announced that the USD 1.5 million chair, funded by members and supporters of the group, will "enable Harvard to regularly invite eminent scholars studying issues related to sexual minorities." The first visiting faculty member is expected to be appointed for the fall of 2010 and will teach at the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, usually in affiliation with the women's studies committee, the announcement said on Wednesday. The chair is to be...

Harvard University will endow a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies, a position that, it believes, will be the first endowed, named chair in the subject at an American college. The visiting professorship, which the university is planning to announce formally as part of commencement exercises on Thursday, was made possible by a gift of $1.5 million from the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus. With the gift, Harvard said it would regularly invite “eminent scholars studying issues related to sexuality or sexual minorities” to teach on campus for one semester, according to a draft of a university...

A brilliant scholar from Brooklyn is being eyed as the possible link between a slain pot dealer and three men who killed him in her Harvard dorm last week, sources said. Chanequa Campbell, 21, has been banned from the campus and told she won't be graduating with her class next month as authorities continue to investigate the murder of Justin Cosby, her lawyer said.

FORT LEE, N.J., May 21, 2009 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The National Inflation Association today released the following statement to its http://inflation.us members: "Harvard professors Gregory Mankiw and Kenneth Rogoff came out this week and said that more inflation is the key to speeding up recovery of the U.S. economy. Gregory Mankiw said he believes the Federal Reserve should work to create negative interest rates and Kenneth Rogoff advocated having a 6% rate of inflation. It is our belief that any inflation is too much. Inflation does not create wealth; inflation destroys wealth. It is because of the Keynesian economic...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A man has been shot near a Harvard University dormitory. The man was wounded Monday outside an entrance to Kirkland House, one of a dozen dorms on the university's campus in the Boston suburb of Cambridge. He's hospitalized in stable condition. Police say it's unclear if he's a student. House Master Tom Conley tells The Harvard Crimson daily student newspaper the man doesn't live in the undergraduate dorm. A witness tells the Crimson the victim appeared to be "college-aged" and was bleeding but conscious. Dorm administrators have e-mailed students about the shooting and asked them to cooperate...

A person was shot this evening at the entrance of a Harvard University residence hall, police said. It was not immediately clear whether the male victim, who was shot in the abdomen, was a student. Sergeant James DeFrancisco of the Cambridge Police said that after authorities were alerted about 4:50 p.m. they found the victim on Dunster Street, outside Kirkland House, one of Harvard's 12 undergraduate houses. DeFrancisco said the victim was taken to the hospital and was in stable condition. The Cambridge and Harvard police departments blocked off streets near the shooting and were searching for an assailant, according...

The Harvard School of Dental Medicine will be closed today after a sample collected from a student there was deemed a "probable" case of swine flu late yesterday. According to Director of University Health Services David S. Rosenthal ’59, state health officials are still waiting for final results from Atlanta, where the sample, originally taken on Monday, was sent to be tested at the Centers for Disease Control—currently the only facility in the country that has the capacity to issue final confirmation on swine flu. "All I know is they have a positive culture for H1 and they sent it...

Donor Intent Denied...To Jane Fonda by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 01, 2009 Believe it or not, the cavalier attitude that colleges and universities take towards donors can bite the left too. “On most issues, Robert Novak and Jane Fonda have nothing in common,” author Martin Morse Wooster writes in the Foundation Watch newsletter. “But on the issue of donor intent in universities, they are on the same side.” Foundation Watch is a publication of the Capital Research Center, where Wooster is a senior fellow. “In 2001, Fonda donated $6.5 million and pledged an additional $6 million to the Harvard...

What do Pakistan's Swat Valley and Harvard University have in common Their leading Islamic authorities uphold the Shariah (Islamic law) tradition of punishing those who leave Islam with death. There are differences, of course...Shariah actually rules the Swat Valley, while Shariah's traditions, as promulgated by Harvard Muslim chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser, retain a more or less theoretical caste. In a recently publicized e-mail, Mr. Abdul-Basser approvingly explained to a student the traditional Islamic practice of executing converts from Islam. As the chaplain put it: "There is great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment), and so, even...

...HMC frequently under-reported its income from outside money management firms by “netting” it, or cancelling it out, with management fees paid out by the University. This practice, which reduces HMC tax obligations, is questionable because much of the income that Harvard receives from the firms actually derives from management fees that the firms collect from other investors—activities unrelated to the University’s tax-exempt purpose...In one particularly infuriating incident, Rose said that after he repeatedly inquired about a seemingly purposeless investment vehicle, a lawyer informed him that the company was actually set up to help a former employee defer his income to...

Remarks on apostasy and capital punishment under Islamic law by Harvard’s Muslim chaplain have become the center of a heated debate about whether Islamic and Western values can be compatible. In an e-mail to an unnamed student, the chaplain, Taha Abdul-Basser, stated that most traditional authorities on Islamic law agree that in countries under Muslim governance, the proper punishment for apostasy — that is, rejection of Islam by a former Muslim — is death. The e-mail was subsequently published online, and although Abdul-Basser has distanced himself personally from that position, the remarks have stirred a flurry of controversy and debate....

Memorial Church seems, at first glance, to be a vestige of Harvard’s Puritan roots. The austere brick façade evokes the covenanted communities of New England from which Harvard men used to flock. Accordingly, Memorial Church is Protestant. The student body has changed drastically over the years, but this anachronism, as Pusey Minister Peter J. Gomes called it in 1973, still remains. To reflect the diverse array of faiths on campus and act as an inclusive home for religious life at Harvard, Memorial Church should become a solely interfaith space. Harvard College today would be unrecognizable to Charles Eliot, the university...

Harvard is open to just about anything, but for 40 years it has been closed to the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. That's about to change. Gen. David H. Petraeus will be the featured speaker at this year's ROTC commissioning ceremony at Harvard University, marking a step in Harvard's reclaiming of its honored tradition of service to the country. ....There are about three dozen Harvard students in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), but the program is officially unrecognized. Students get no credit for military-science classes, and course work and drills are held at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology .....The...

Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser ’96 has recently come under fire for controversial statements in which he allegedly endorsed death as a punishment for Islamic apostates. In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was “great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.” The e-mail was forwarded over Muslim student e-mail lists and later picked up by the blogosphere, sparking debate and, in...

The superstars at Harvard defied markets for years-- until now. Here's the inside story of how they finally tripped up.Stocks were tumbling last fall as the new school year began, but at Harvard University it was as if the boom had never ended. Workers were digging across the river from Harvard's Cambridge, Mass. home, the start of a grand expansion that was to eventually almost double the size of the university. Budgets were plump, and students from middle-class families were getting big tuition breaks under an ambitious new financial aid program. The lavish spending was made possible by the earnings...