The Lander Legacy
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teenage crime. In December 1943, Baltimore Mayor Theodore McKeldin appointed Rabbi Lander to the commission itself. During his service as a consultant, Lander helped to revise mandated high school curricula that added special racial and religious tolerance courses designed to battle the prejudice children often encountered in the home. These courses were highly unique and fully decades ahead of their time. Once Rabbi Lander became a commissioner, he served on the executive committee and became involved in empirically evaluating various means of reducing delinquency in one particular economically depressed Baltimore neighborhood. The methods of statistical analysis he developed in this role dovetailed perfectly with the research he was conducting for his doctoral dissertation. There is little question that Bernard Lander’s religious background influenced his service to the governmental agencies that sought his counsel in combating juvenile crime. His worldview, shaped by Talmudic tractates and both the written and oral traditions of Judaism, is clearly evident in the manner in which he approached his analysis. Lander regarded juvenile delinquency, at its core, as the by-product of society’s deviation from normative social constructs. He observed that as adult family members moved further from their traditional roles, due to wartime and economic imperatives, a direct consequence was the loss of ethical socialization among their children. As he surveyed the social forces at work that produce societal ills such as juvenile delinquency, Rabbi Lander’s conclusions demonstrated strong parallels with his ingrained views on the value of Jewish observance. While he never listed specific analogies, the sway of Orthodox Judaism is Spiritual Sociologist 49 clearly evident throughout his written works. Such works were to include Rabbi Lander’s Columbia doctoral dissertation that would eventually be published as a book and become recognized as a landmark treatise on juvenile delinquency in America. While his pastoral duties and work as consultant and commissioner occupied most mornings during the war years of 1942 and 1943, Bernard Lander’s afternoons were almost always spent at the Baltimore City Department of Vital Statistics or deep in the records room of the city’s Juvenile Court. Here he would delve into census tracts, court records, and other arcane documents as he slowly began to formulate a new slant on the root causes of juvenile delinquency; an approach that would fundamentally challenge the prevailing wisdom. Studies undertaken during the 1930s by social researchers Park and Burgess at the University of Chicago compared juvenile crime rates against economic census tract data. The studies had claimed to find a strong statistical correlation between delinquency levels and the average income level of a given neighborhood. Lower average income meant a higher juvenile crime rate, according to Park and Burgess. But Lander’s immersion into Baltimore’s crime and census statistics soon led him to question this widely held correlation. In studying some of the poorest areas of Baltimore, he observed that they experienced virtually no juvenile crime! His findings flew in the face of the U. of C. studies. How was this possible? Was Baltimore so different from Chicago? Lander did not think so. He determined that the statistical analysis methods employed by the Chicago social researchers were flawed. He suspected that the application of more advanced methods of statistical analysis might lead to different conclusions in the quest to understand the underlying causes of juvenile delinquency. This profound insight proved to be accurate and became the basis for Lander’s doctoral dissertation research that would serve to shape governmental social policy for years to come. But if family income was not a major factor leading to delinquency, then what was? What identifiable thread ran through the lives of young offenders that could be countered and thereby prevent the aberrant behavior before it occurred? This question hounded Lander as he strove to interpret the mountains of demographic and census data he was poring over. For example, he learned that from the years 1939 through 1942 there 50 The Lander Legacy were 8,464 hearings in Baltimore’s Juvenile Court. Lander extracted and recorded the essential data about each case on a single 3 x 5 index card. Next, each card was assigned to a census tract based upon the defendant’s street address. The monumental task of analyzing these data would lead Lander once again into a realm that was decades ahead of his time: statistical data analysis via electronic computer. The saga of the embryonic science of computing and how it was applied to analyze social demographic data at Columbia is a dramatic and historic one. The Bureau of Radio Research, a pioneering social science research group headed by Paul Lazarsfeld and funded by a Rockefeller grant, was actually founded at Princeton in 1937 and moved to Columbia at the outbreak of the war. In 1944, its name was changed to the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR). BASR at Columbia became the focus of the nascent field of quantitative sociology. From the time it moved to Columbia, the Bureau enjoyed access to a series of ever more sophisticated proto-computers. These electronic “tabulating machines” were operated via IBM punch cards and were capable of quickly (by the standards of the day) digesting large volumes of numeric data and running rapid linear regression analyses, for example. Of course it would take one of Columbia’s IBM machines a full year to analyze the amount of data that any of today’s personal computers could digest in a few minutes. But, in their day, these punched card “tabulators” represented a quantum leap forward from the “adding machine” methods in use at the time. Bernard Lander painstakingly transferred the raw data he had recorded on his thousands of index cards over to IBM punched cards that could then be fed into the calculating behemoths at Columbia and appropriate statistical tests applied. Was there a statistically significant correlation between the number of years of schooling completed by a teenager and the likelihood of his being arrested for a felony? Was race a factor? Parental divorce? Lander even examined the question of whether taller youngsters were more criminally inclined than shorter ones. Working with his mentor at Columbia, Professor William S. Robinson, Lander developed a solid foundation in the field of statistical analysis. Robinson, along with Scottish sociologist Robert MacIver, served as Rabbi Lander’s dissertation advisors. Lander also was fortunate to work under the Bureau’s celebrated director, Paul Lazarsfeld. Spiritual Sociologist 51 By the time he left Baltimore in 1944, Lander’s research and dissertation were functionally complete. Since his results challenged the findings of the earlier University of Chicago study, he framed his work as an “ecological study,” just like theirs. An ecological study is one that applies a series of statistical tests normally applied to an individual, to an entire population. Lander was aware, however, of the hazards involved in this approach. Professor Robinson, his advisor, had discovered what was called the “ecological fallacy,” which wrongly imputed the characteristics of the entire group to each individual within that group in a form of statistical stereotyping. Lander did not make this mistake in the conclusions that he drew from his analyses. Utilizing the IBM tabulating equipment, Lander’s results carried more weight than the U. of C. study because they were drawn from a much larger population. After years of carefully organizing the results of his study, Rabbi Lander was finally able to complete and defend his dissertation in 1948. Toward an Understanding of Juvenile Delinquency; A Study of 8,484 Cases of Juvenile Delinquency in Baltimore represented a breakthrough in the field of applied social science. Building on MacIver’s earlier work, Social Causation, Lander’s treatise is radically innovative in its use of multiple and partial co-relational and factor analysis. But what did this advanced scientific approach to society’s problems have to teach us? The conclusion was clear. Juvenile delinquency was not, as previously believed, primarily the result of unfavorable economic conditions. The main predictive indicator of delinquency, according to Lander, was a breakdown of social structure brought on by the encroachment of industry on established neighborhoods. In his conclusion, Lander cautions that the results of his study must be regarded as “predictive,” rather than “causative.” Statistical correlations do not always imply causation. Umbrellas come out whenever it’s raining, but umbrellas do not cause the rain to fall. He concludes his dissertation by offering the following disclaimer: The statistical findings in themselves do not supply the answer to the causal basis of the differential delinquency rate, but do provide a map, which if analyzed with care and caution, may suggest some directions and answers. They enable us to test and 52 The Lander Legacy suggest hypotheses. Statistical techniques and their results are effective aids in the quest for understanding. At best, however, they provide only clues, and if used without caution, may in many instances even be misleading. Both Professors MacIver and Robinson strongly encouraged Rabbi Lander to publish his dissertation in book format in order to reach a wider audience. Lander agreed. Towards an Understanding of Juvenile Delinquency was, in fact, published by Columbia University Press in 1954. As MacIver notes in the introduction, he wrote for the book, “Lander has exposed the weaknesses of much of the work done in the investigation of the causes of delinquency, bringing out the defects of the methods on which certain conclusions have been based.” Lander’s work became a widely read and widely cited monograph, both within and outside of the field of social science. At least five major studies applied Lander’s innovative techniques to juvenile crime statistics in other large cities. The book was reprinted in 1955 and in 1958 and stands today as a pioneering landmark in the application of statistical analysis in the quest to further our understanding of social issues. Bernard Lander’s years at Columbia, devoted to his doctoral studies in sociology, came at a time when the field was undergoing its greatest expansion. This growth was driven by widely held optimism, bordering on na.vet., that the scientific method applied to societal ills could deliver solutions resulting in a better world. This noble and benevolent attitude had not always prevailed, however. The term sociology was originally coined in 1838 by French philosopher Auguste Comte, who had investigated the question of why certain societies endure and others decay. The Industrial Revolution’s wide-reaching disruption of centuries-old social patterns and values sparked fervent academic interest in the social sciences. This era was marked by the work of Herbert Spencer, who gained fame as the father of “social Darwinism,” a theory positing that societies evolve from primitive forms to more complex ones through a process that mimics human evolution. From this notion emerged a school of thought that opposed any form of social reform since it would interfere with the “natural selection” process that insured the survival of the fittest. Sadly, such notions would eventually serve as the misguided underpinnings of Nazi racial theories. Theories, that when put into deadly practice, would result in the destruction of the Jewish world in Europe. Spiritual Sociologist 53 The American school of sociology, as personified by figures such as Lester F. Ward and others, viewed sociology much differently—as an instrument of human benefit designed to unlock answers about social forces that would ultimately promote happiness and universal freedom. It was this school of “enlightened” sociology that attracted the young Bernard Lander to the field, and it was this variety that he encountered and later embraced as a doctoral candidate at Columbia. Under the dynamic leadership of Professor Robert MacIver in the 1930s, Columbia emerged, alongside the University of Chicago, as the focal point of American sociological study. While the “Chicago School” became identified with social reform, it was at Columbia, under MacIver and his predecessor Franklin Giddings, that quantitative and statistical analysis of social phenomena was being carried out. Bernard Lander revered MacIver with great affection and respect, as did all of the professor’s students. The relationship between MacIver and Rabbi Lander was a close and enduring one. As stated, MacIver served as Lander’s dissertation advisor and provided him with the ongoing fatherly encouragement he needed to complete his massive study on Juvenile Delinquency. The two men would later work side by side on a major investigation of Jewish organizations that was hailed as a breakthrough at the time it was published. Columbia was home to the one sociological study that received more attention than any other during this early period. Middletown, a detailed examination of a typical American small town—Muncie, Indiana—written by Robert S. and Helen Lynd in 1929, became a bestseller and served to introduce the field of sociology to the general public. The book is still required reading in most first-year sociology classes today. A dispute erupted between MacIver and Robert Lynd during the time that Bernard Lander was at Columbia. The intellectual civil war was sparked by a critical review by MacIver of one of Lynd’s books. Eminent German-born social researchers, such as Erich Fromm and Max Horkheimer of Columbia’s Institute for Social Research, were forced to take sides in the academic tug-of-war. Bernard Lander, not surprisingly, elected to side with his mentor, Professor MacIver. The resulting friction led to the eventual departure of Fromm and Horkheimer. But perhaps Rabbi Lander’s greatest intellectual influence at Columbia was Professor Paul Lazarsfeld, a giant in the field of American sociology. Lazarsfeld fled Vienna in the early 1940s and eventually joined the 54 The Lander Legacy Columbia faculty as the director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR). It was at BASR that Lander gained access to the IBM tabulating machines used to compile the vast data employed in his doctoral dissertation. But it was not merely by the use of its proto-computers that Lander benefited from his work at the Bureau. Professor Lazarsfeld had expanded the work of BASR beyond pure research into the realm of the practical. The Bureau regularly worked with both corporate and governmental clients on a fee basis to carry out specific commissioned studies. To this end, Lazarsfeld had assembled a large and expert staff, adept at answering any question thrown at them using the latest empirical methods. Thanks to his relationship with Professor Lazarsfeld, Lander was able to employ these methods as he sought to draw valid conclusions from his data analysis. While at Columbia, Lander also studied under Canadian social psychologist Otto Klineberg, who was known for discrediting racial theories based on intelligence testing. Klineberg conducted IQ tests on immigrants, American Indians, and black students and discovered no correlation between race and intelligence. His seminal studies greatly influenced the United States Supreme Court in its 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that struck down racial segregation in America’s public schools. Lander would often cite Klineberg’s studies in his future work. But while Bernard Lander toiled within Columbia’s halls of academe, seeking answers to the burning social issues of the day, the world around him was igniting in flames. As U.S. troops fought bravely to bring down regimes built on racism and persecution in Europe and the Pacific, those same enemies of humanity were rearing their ugly heads on the home front. Violent race riots raged in Detroit and New York’s Harlem during the summer of 1943. New York was further plagued that year by vicious anti-Jewish activity among the Irish teenage gangs that populated Washington Heights and the South Bronx. With shouts of “Kill the Jews!” these marauding gangs targeted synagogues during religious services, vandalizing them severely and attacking any Jewish children they encountered, in an Americanized version of Kristallnacht. Entire Jewish neighborhoods were terrorized by these anti-Semitic gangs, inspired by the Father Coughlin–led Christian Front, and made up entirely of Irish Catholic teenagers. These gangs harassed Jewish storekeepers and had desecrated nearly every synagogue in Manhattan’s Washington Spiritual Sociologist 55 Heights, an area that was home to a great many European Jewish immigrants who had fled Hitler, seeking sanctuary in “the home of the free.” In December 1943, the New York Times reported that vandals had desecrated Jewish cemeteries throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and other areas of Long Island, overturning gravestones and painting obscenities and swastikas on them. This outrage garnered national attention, prompting U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle to compare the damage done to New York’s Jewish cemeteries to that witnessed in Nazi-occupied countries in Europe. These atrocities were heavily covered in the press along with stories of individual Jews terrorized by roving bands of Irish thugs. For example, it was reported that three teenagers in the Bronx surrounded a fourteenyear- old Jewish boy and demanded to know if he was Jewish. When he nodded, they shouted: “He’s a Jew! Let him have it!” They beat him and Download 1.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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