Professor Gates

President Obama stood by his criticism of the Cambridge police department's arrest of Harvard University Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., telling ABC News's Terry Moran he was "surprised" by the controversy sparked by his comment during a prime-time news conference Wednesday that the department had behaved "stupidly."

"I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement because I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home," Obama told Moran in an interview set to air Thursday evening on "Nightline," excerpts from which were made available online.

The president called arresting officer Sgt. James Crowley an "outstanding police officer" but emphasized that "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

He also sought to be more even-handed in apportioning blame, suggesting that Gates, too, ought to have behaved differently. "I have extraordinary respect for the difficulties of the job that police officers do," the president added. "And my suspicion is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates and that everybody should have just settled down and cooler heads should have prevailed. That's my suspicion."

Earlier, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters traveling to Cleveland with the president on Air Force One that Gates's arrest was the result of behavior on "both sides" that got "out of hand."

"Let me be clear," Gibbs said. "He was not calling the officer stupid, okay? He was denoting that ... at a certain point the situation got far out of hand, and I think all sides understand that."

Obama has not spoken with Gates about his arrest, Gibbs said. At the news conference Wednesday, Obama called Gates a friend, saying "I may be a little biased here."

Obama's blunt assessment of the Cambridge police has sparked a wave of online and television chatter. "Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that," Obama said Wednesday night. "But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."

Gibbs also clarified that when Obama spoke of potentially being shot for trying to jimmy a door, he was speaking of the White House, which is heavily protected by the Secret Service, and not of his private home in Chicago or the Chicago police.

Professor Gates held fundraiser for Obama
More connections to 'radical' Harvard man at center of race row
July 25th 2009
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor at the center of the current national race controversy, once held a political fundraiser for President Obama, WND has learned.

Gates regularly rents homes in Martha's Vineyard, where he vacations frequently. In an interview last year with Martha's Vineyard Magazine, the professor related a fundraiser he held at a house in the town of Harthaven for Obama during his race for the Senate:

"The last several years, I've written a book there every summer. It's a great house for events too. We had a fundraiser for Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate," Gates told the magazine.

Gates also said he talked to Obama numerous times and that he donated the maximum allowable contribution to Obama's presidential campaign.

Gates could not be immediately reached for comment.

The professor found himself inside a racial storm after he was handcuffed in his home by police following a burglary report. Obama mentioned the incident last week in a primetime news conference, accusing police of acting "stupidly" in dealing with Gates.

Yesterday, Obama invited Gates and the policeman, James Crowley, to join him for a beer. The president also acknowledged he had spoken too hastily in "maligning" the police:

"I could have calibrated those words differently," he said.

Still, Obama did not take back his contention the police acted wrongly in handcuffing Gates in his own house.

Gates linked to radical black, communist activists

Gates, it turns out, has recruited radical black activists to his university department, is a prominent supporter of reparations for the descendents of slaves and has immortalized a communist and socialist activist.

Since 1991, Gates has been teaching African American studies at Harvard, where he serves as the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. De Bois, an American civil rights activist, sociologist, historian and author, was an avowed communist and socialist sympathizer.

Du Bois was for a brief time a member of the Socialist Party. In 1927 he infamously traveled to the USSR, where he called the Soviet system "the most hopeful vehicle for the world." Eight years later, he published the book "Black Reconstruction," which offered a Marxist interpretation of the Reconstruction Era.

The leftist icon officially joined the communist cause in 1950, when he ran for the New York State Senate on the American Labor Party ticket. He lost the election, but eight years later joined Trotskyites, ex-communists and independent radicals in proposing the creation of a united left-wing coalition to run for seats in New York state elections.

Du Bois joined the Communist Party USA in 1961. He emigrated to Ghana, where he became a naturalized citizen, living in the country's socialist police state. Two years later, the Communist Party named its new youth group the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs.

Serving as director for the Harvard institute immortalizing Du Bois, Gates cultivated black radicals to his race studies department, most prominently bringing in Cornel West, a controversial adviser on Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March with close ties to socialist and black extremist groups. West is a declared personal friend of Farrakhan.

Gates also lured to Harvard socialist sympathizer Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher, cultural theorist and novelist, as well as William Julius Wilson, who is close to the Democrat Socialists of America.

Gates authored two books with West, a long-time member and honorary chair of the Democrat Socialists of America. West served on the black advisory board of Obama's presidential campaign.

From a young age, West proclaimed he admired "the sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party … and the livid black [liberation] theology of James Cone."

Cone's theology spawned Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's controversial pastor for 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ. West was a strong defender of Wright when the pastor's extreme remarks became national news during last year's campaign season.

Gates himself is a strong supporter of affirmative action and a key member of the reparations movement for the descendants of African slaves. He joined an effort to bring a class action lawsuit for reparations and reportedly has been working privately to urge political and business leaders to keep the issue of slavery at the forefront of social justice discussions and to support his campaign for reparations.

One of Gates' major sources of intellectual inspiration is Herbert Aptheker, a seminal scholar of African-American history who was a radical American leftist. Aptheker was for decades a leading theorist of the Communist Party USA before resigning in 1991.

Gates was quoted stating Obama's election last year rivaled the day in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and the day 101 years later when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

"There's never been a moment like this in our lifetime, ever," Gates said.