VIA EURWEB:
President Obama will meet this week with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer James Crowley, who arrested Gates for disorderly conduct, the White House said Monday.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs did not announce the date or time the three men will convene at the White House, reports CNN.
Last week, Obama said that he called Crowley, and “there was a discussion about he and I and Professor Gates having a beer here in the White House.” Gibbs said: “I think it was Sergeant Crowley’s suggestion about the beer, and I think the president thought it was a good idea.”
Obama said he hoped the incident in Cambridge — which quickly spiraled into a national, racially charged controversy — “ends up being what’s called a teachable moment” for the country. The president acknowledged that he had contributed to “ratcheting it up” by declaring that the police department had “acted stupidly” even though he didn’t know all the facts of the case and is a personal friend of Gates.
