Auf einer von Newsweek und der Washington Post gemeinsam betriebenen Website On Faith hat sich jetzt der stellvertretende Dekan des Simon-Wiesenthal-Zentrums, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, zu Wort gemeldet. Das Zentrum sei, schreibt er, die vielleicht einzige Gruppe, die schon vor dem Vorfall sowohl in Kontakt mit Professor Gates als auch in Kontakt mit Sergeant Crowley stand.

Das Zentrum beschäftigt sich nämlich seit langem, und zwar offenbar sehr rational, mit dem Thema Racial Profiling. Unter anderem ist es der Urheber des Trainingsprogramms für Polizisten, in dem Crowley als Lehrer tätig war. Über Crowley urteilt Cooper so:

Zitat von Abraham Cooper

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The officers who came to our training sessions kept telling us of their concern about and confusion over racial profiling, which led us in 2001 to create an interactive course called Perspectives on Profiling™.

Enter Sgt. Crowley, who in 2007 was sent by his department to the Museum of Tolerance to become a trainer on the issue of racial profiling. Crowley was an outstanding student, and he was invited back last year for an advanced course. "He stands out to me. He was one of those people who really engaged in sessions, who really showed a high level of understanding of the issue," said Sunny Lee, director of Tools for Tolerance® for Law Enforcement.

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Zitat von Abraham Cooper

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After the Slave Trade debate in 1992, Professor Gates gave the Wiesenthal Center's annual State of Anti-Semitism Lecture: "We must acknowledge our diversity even while we identify with each other...In short, place a priority in our shared humanity andAFt identify not as a nigger...nor kike but as man, permitted to be man," he said.

Visitors to our New York Tolerance Center will find this quote from Professor Gates embedded between quotes from Gandhi and Einstein: "There is no Tolerance without Respect; there's no Respect without Knowledge".

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