Needham becomes the latest community to suspend ties with the ADL's No Place for Hate program

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. The board of selectmen voted Tuesday to act on the committee's recommendation.

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