Are Harvard Students and Faculty thin skinned?

Bob Herbert comments on other incidents "similar" to the recent Gates arrest. Let's look at what he says.

The Harvard police, responding to a phone call, spotted the youngster attempting to remove a lock from a bicycle. He tried to explain that the bike was his and that his key had broken off in the lock.
One of the officers reportedly pulled a gun and pointed it at the teenager. The frightened youngster said he did not have any photo identification, but he showed the officers his library card. Traumatized, he started to cry at one point. When the boy’s story was eventually confirmed, he was allowed to leave with his bike.

O.K., pulling a gun was perhaps a bit much. But note that this is not racial profiling by the police - they were tipped off by a phone call. The kid was not arrested and left with his bike.

In 2004, the campus police stopped S. Allen Counter, a distinguished professor of neuroscience at the Harvard Medical School...In a particularly humiliating ritual, the officers went to University Hall and asked two students to confirm that the professor had an office there. They did.

Now, what does being a distinguished professor have to do with this? Is Bob Herbert suggesting that distinguished professors should get special treatment? Shades of Gates allegedly telling officer Crowley that he "had no idea who he was messing with". Secondly, I don't see how walking over to a couple of students and asking if the professor belonged there is "particularly humiliating". If anything, it's humiliating (and embarrassing) to the officers when they are proven wrong. Was Professor Counter handcuffed? Was he shackled in leg irons? Was he strip searched for ibuprofin? No. I see nothing "particularly humiliating". Only if one considers that being a distinguished professor makes one immune to normal hum-drum police routine is any of this humiliating. Will Professor Counter complain next time he is asked to remove his shoes at airline security? He is, after-all, a distinguished professor of neuroscience at Harvard! Who are those TSA people to ask him to remove his shoes?

In the final example, Bob Herbert himself exonerates the police! (emphasis added by me)

Nworah Ayogu... told me about a well-known incident that occurred in 2007 when a number of black students were playing games like dodge ball and capture-the-flag on the Quad as part of an annual field-day-type celebration. White students called the Harvard police to investigate. The police showed up on motorcycles and asked the black students for identification, even though the students were wearing all kinds of Harvard regalia — caps, crimson T-shirts with “Harvard” emblazoned in white, and so forth. Mr. Ayogu said the cops actually seemed to be embarrassed by the situation and were not confrontational.

Now, I don't know how Mr. Ayogu knows that the callers were white. A reasonable, smart guess, or racial profiling? The police showed up, asked for IDs, and behaved properly.

Now, if Bob Herbert had a real point, I'd think he'd come up with shocking examples of police misconduct, false arrests, racial profiling, and brutality against black students and faculty. He fails. If these are the worst examples of "humiliation" he can come up with, things aren't so bad there. Stop crying "wolf" and get on with your lives. Enjoy the fact that you teach or study at one of America's top (and wealthiest) Universities.

Disclaimer: I was an undergraduate at Dartmouth, a Harvard rival. Go Big Green!