Should Skip Gates Apologize to the Cop, or Vice Versa?

Should Skip Gates apologize to the cop? Should Sgt. Crowley apologize to the academic? I don't care who starts, but an olive branch is surely in order after their first encounter. The unscripted moment, to which both men brought baggage last week, was indeed "regrettable and unfortunate" but there are already too many versions for any one of them to be 100 percent accurate.

We do know a week ago two men in a Boston suburb had an uncomfortable confrontation that included yelling, handcuffs, curious passersby, class privilege, uniformed authority and allegations of racial stereotyping, when a cop came to the home of a professor to check out a report of a possible break-in -- and ended up arresting the professor on his front porch. The participants were a 42-year-old veteran of the Cambridge Police Department, Sgt. James Crowley, who also teaches a course in racial profiling at Lowell Police Academy, and Dr. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, a smallish 58-year-old Harvard scholar, writer, editor, and documentary maker who walks with a cane but who has never shied from using his words.

Gates says when he saw Crowley on his front porch and the officer asked him to step outside "all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, 'No, I will not.'"

We don't want to, but we react emotionally to unexpected situations. We even lose our temper occasionally out of fatigue or stress, and, though a small fit isn't dignified, it is human. Over the years, I have personally experienced several of my own unattractive meltdowns in inappropriate situations. Ask my children.

Whatever triggered each person's behavior in the altercation -- and I can't begin to guess what entitlement or persecution issues get wrapped up in Ivy League pedigrees, ethnic heritage or over 15 years of carrying a gun and wearing a uniform to protect the peace – it seems like the chemistry of their confrontation had a lot of adrenaline and testosterone in it. Whatever happened between them last week escalated in importance to where, days later, the president of the United States was giving his take at a news conference and again on Friday.

Gates and Crowley spent an uncomfortable four hours in each other's company on July 16, when the officer was "thrust into a crime in progress" and the professor, seeing him on the porch, "knew he wasn't canvassing for the police benevolent association." Whether or not they do so over a beer at the White House, maybe each can try for a more calm and open-minded conversation with the other. Maybe the two, for a moment at least, could understand what unraveled from the other man's perspective.