Boston Globe, MA
Dec 7 2007
Needham becomes the latest community to suspend ties with the ADL’s
No Place for Hate program
By Ralph Ranalli December 7, 07 11:10 AM
NEEDHAM
The Needham Board of Selectmen has voted to suspend ties with the
Anti-Defamation League’s No Place for Hate program.
The town’s Human Rights Committee recommended distancing Needham from
the anti-bias program, which promotes tolerance and diversity,
because the ADL has waffled on its recognition of the Armenian
Genocide.
Under national pressure from Armenian-Americans and human rights
advocates, the ADL recently acknowledged that the atrocities
committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians are "tantamount
to genocide," but declined to further refine that stance. The
committee had requested that the ADL unequivocally recognize the
massacres that took place between 1915 and 1923 as a genocide.
Four selectmen voted to suspend ties. One selectman, James Healy,
abstained from the vote because he did not feel the board should take
up the issue.
— Laura Colarusso