TALK IT OUT

Gates Accepts Obama's Invite

Will meet with Sgt. Crowley at the White House.

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has agreed to take President Obama up on his offer to have a beer with Sgt James Crowley, who arrested him earlier this week, at the White House. "I am hopeful that my experience will lead to greater sensitivity to issues of racial profiling in the criminal justice system. It is time for all of us to move on, and to assess what we can learn from this experience," Gates wrote in an email to the Boston Globe. Obama said in a surprise appearance on Friday that Gates and Crowley were both "decent people" and should have "a beer here in the White House." He then called both men to invite them personally. Obama earlier caught heat from police and others when he said Crowley "acted stupidly" when arresting Gates in his own home. He dialed back on those comments Friday after igniting a fiery national debate about race, saying he should have “calibrated those words differently.”