Gates Review Panel Announces Members

A dozen law enforcement and conflict resolution experts have been appointed to the Cambridge Review Committee tasked with analyzing the controversial July arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., Cambridge officials announced last Thursday.

The group’s members hail from across the country and include the dean of the Rutgers School of Law, the Philadelphia Police Commissioner, a United States District Court judge, a former FBI assistant director, and a U.S. State Department senior advisor who worked on Arab-Israeli negotiations.

“This is a historic opportunity for the city to emerge as a stronger community,” said Cambridge City Manager Robert W. Healy in the press release.

The committee will begin meeting in October to discuss its mission and goals, the announcement said, and will look to study police training, instruction, and operations; the racial, class, and interpersonal complexities of policing; and potential lessons from the Gates arrest that may be applicable to Cambridge and other communities.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum and chair of the panel, said that the Committee is expected to meet for three to five months before releasing a report.

He praised the Committee’s “considerable experience” and said that the group would provide independent assessment and insight into the incident.

Since announcing the formation of the Committee in July, city officials have stressed that the aim of the panel is not to compile an “action report” of the arrest, but to look at the incident more broadly and give recommendations for police when faced with similar situations in the future. Wexler said that Committee members will be reimbursed for traveling expenses but will not be paid.

Gates was arrested at his Cambridge home in July for disorderly conduct after a passerby reported to police that two men—actually Gates and his car driver—had forced their way through Gates’ front door.

While the charges were dropped soon thereafter, the arrest triggered national debates about race and sparked a media frenzy.

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.