Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

Unmentioned, as far as I know, in all the discussion about the escape of two convicted murderers from the Clinton Correctional Facility (the name itself could be the title of a future article on politics!) is this simple fact: had the murderers been executed, as murderers should be, they would not be currently on the lam, people in the vicinity of the escape would not be hiding behind closed doors with all local schools closed, and we would not be talking about them. Much of the opposition to the death penalty ignores its basic justice and focuses on the dangers of executing the innocent (whom, of course, no one wants to execute, just like no one wants to imprison the innocent); but it fails to consider the danger to society posed by keeping the convicted violent alive, either on their fellow inmates, prison guards, or – as now – innocent civilians who might be caught in the crossfire.

That is simply a sidebar to the return to the 1970’s that American society is now undergoing – the increase in crime, the urban discontent, the persistent sniping at the police and authority and the lingering notion that much of urban America is a failed society that cannot be redeemed. Politicians – especially liberals – are looking assiduously for answers in all the wrong places. Cities with the most restrictive gun control laws are – not ironically but predictably – the most violent places in the country. Those laws keep guns out of the hands of the law-abiding, not the violent and depraved. The evisceration of the “stop and frisk” policy of the NYPD has led to an increase in shootings and homicides, and mostly in depressed communities. Who would’ve thought that?? Criminals who no longer fear being stopped, frisked and arrested are now carrying firearms more frequently, and they are not being stopped and frisked. Those results were, unfortunately, almost impossible to foresee (by those wearing blinders). It just seemed to them more likely that a decrease in “stop and frisk” would have engendered a more grateful community, whose criminal elements would now desist from illegal weapons possession out of respect for the respect shown them.

Do people with ideas like that really exist? Yes. And not only do they exist but also they largely govern America’s cities. The consequences are obvious.

More importantly, police shootings of civilians have decreased dramatically over the last 10, 20, 30 and 40 years, but you wouldn’t know it from the hullabaloo across the country. Police conduct – from Ferguson to New York, from Baltimore to Texas – is ab initio judged unfavorably. The police are suspects in any confrontation with minorities and presumed to be guilty even if after due process has found no cause for prosecution. Since the Baltimore riots, violent crime has escalated in Baltimore and there has been a spike in homicides and other crimes in the depressed neighborhoods. The same has occurred in other cities in which the police have found themselves under siege.

It is as if the police have absented themselves and said: “You don’t want us? You only find fault with us? You blame us for any confrontation? So, live without us. See how much you enjoy that.” A black man died in police custody, and Baltimore erupted in violence, arson and mayhem.  Politicians and racial hucksters of all types descended on Baltimore to make their statements and castigate the police. The next weekend, nine blacks were shot to death in Baltimore, presumably by other blacks. No politicians, no hucksters, no statements – and no riots. Go figure.

In my work as an attorney, I met the occasional police officer who bent the rules (usually, to facilitate the prosecution of someone who otherwise could not be charged) and some who were arrogant and condescending. Then as now, the overwhelming majority are not like that but are attempting to do an impossible job – protecting the innocent from an underclass that is essentially fatherless, uneducated or just undereducated, with little prospects for income-producing jobs that can support families if indeed they desired to support their families.

It doesn’t have to be like that nor does it help to blame everyone else for one’s own problems – the standard approach today. Intact families usually produce decent, law-abiding children. Even in fatherless families, strong mothers have been able to control and guide their offspring into becoming productive citizens. I knew teenage delinquents who were hesitant to be released from custody on bail or on their own recognizance because they feared the repercussions from their mothers who awaited them in the courtroom. On several occasions, I personally witnessed mothers smack their sons upon their release to the extent that court officers had to intervene, so disappointed and disgusted were the mothers with their sons’ misconduct. I trust that still exists.

But blaming the police has been added to blaming the society, the white establishment, slavery, etc. for all the ailments of the black community. Such is misguided, self-serving and plain wrong. Whatever one says about the tragic encounters between police and black men who have died in the recent past (and it seems clear in hindsight that some of the situations should have been resolved without fatalities) it should be noted that the police were not engaging choirboys and choirgirls, nuns and saints. Almost everyone was involved in some past or present unlawful conduct, not conduct that merited death but conduct that was criminal – petty theft, trespassing, outstanding warrants, failure to pay child support, resisting arrest, etc. I can’t say that no police officer ever randomly selects an innocent individual for excessively harsh treatment (I represented any number of people charged with resisting arrest – but no underlying crime!) but it is and was extremely rare.

It should be possible to acknowledge that some of the victims here died unnecessarily and also concede that they were up to no good, and that no good attracted the attention of the police. And then their real problems began. But would you rather have the police not intervene, looking away so as not to confront wrongdoers? Well, that is Baltimore in the weeks after the riots, and that is New York City where crime is up and arrests are down for much the same reason. It’s a terrible choice for each police officer: ignore crime-ridden neighborhoods and leave the innocent to their fate (and come home alive every night) or try to arrest the bad guys and be automatically accused of bias, and then watch the arrest and the force used to execute that arrest on YouTube painting you in the eyes of the world as just another yahoo cracker. Why bother?

And here’s the police dilemma, and why I tend to support the police despite occasional missteps that stem not from prejudice or overzealousness as much as from the need to make split-second decisions under great stress. Much was made – and not unfairly – of the black man shot in the back by a police officer (since fired and charged with murder) in South Carolina. Even if the deceased ran two blocks to escape arrest on an outstanding warrant, he need not have died and being shot in the back is never easy to defend.

In New York City not long ago, a young police officer thought he saw a gun in the waistband of a young black man who was walking away from him. The officer ordered the man to stop, pulled his gun but did not shoot that man in the back. The man instead turned, and fired his weapon into the head of Police Officer Brian Moore. The officer, highly acclaimed during his five years on the NYPD, was 25 years old at the time of his death.

Moore did not shoot – and he was murdered.

In such an environment, it makes one wonder why anyone would want to be a police officer and risk one’s life to protect people in the inner cities, some of whom seem less than appreciative of the role of the police officer. Worse, if Moore had shot his killer first – before he himself was shot – he would have been pilloried by the liberal media as another reckless, hateful white cop gunning down blacks. The difference between the two outcomes – and between life and death – was a split second. Was Officer Moore hesitant in responding because of the negative publicity of the other incidents, because of the open season on police officers across the country, because of the fear of being presumed a racist murderer if he had fired first? We will never know.

It shouldn’t be like that. The irony is that police shootings of civilians are a tiny fraction today of what they were even forty years ago. A further irony is that blacks are worse off today by every indicator than they were before the Obama presidency which they supported almost unanimously and which was supposed to bring them salvation from all their ills. Nothing will change until the black family is reinvigorated and stabilized, and the black community begins to accept responsibility for its own failings. Nothing will change until there is an outcry in the black community against the dysfunction in their homes and the criminals in their midst, and a return to values.

Indeed, nothing will change as long as the outrage against the one white cop who kills a black youth dramatically exceeds the outrage against the hundred black youth who kill each other and some innocent bystanders as well. Ultimately, the fault lies with the evildoers – not with the people who try to prevent the evil or have to pick up the pieces afterward.

So where are the leaders – black or white, politicians or preachers – who will say that?

The usually insightful Peggy Noonan (WSJ) broached an issue several weeks ago that brought back memories of my college years. It related to an article published by four aggrieved students in the Spectator, Columbia’s student newspaper, about their sensitivities and concerns that, they claim, are being trampled by some faculty members and elements of the curriculum. What happened?

In the mandatory Humanities Literature course, some of the selections are provocative even if they are not meant to be. The most offensive passage, the writers found, was in Ovid’s Metamorphoses which contained “triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom.” To wit: passages that vividly depict sexual assault in a way that engendered (“triggered” is the phrase de jure) unpleasant reactions in a student who had unfortunately been the victim of such an assault. To add insult to injury, the teacher insensitively focused on “the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery” and did not take care to tiptoe around the feelings of this or any other student. The student “did not feel safe” and “disengaged from classroom discussion as a means of self-preservation.”

Poor child.

We should cut her some slack given her troubling experiences but sometimes one simply has to remain silent and even endure some discomfort. For where does it end? Should every student be pre-screened for disquieting images or incidents in the past that might prove vexatious or irksome when raised in an educational setting?

Perhaps Jews should be exempt from reading the “Merchant of Venice,” pacifists from reading the “Red Badge of Courage,” blacks from “Huckleberry Finn” and vegans from “The Old Man and the Sea” and “Moby Dick.” Or perhaps we should stop reading altogether because the only books that don’t challenge our minds are those that bore us to tears.

Well, the world has certainly changed. When I was a student at Columbia (mercifully, we didn’t read Ovid, who is only being spared prosecution and incarceration because of his untimely demise 1998 years ago), I also had to take Hum Lit and, as I now recall it (having been triggered), the trauma is just being felt. At one time, I too was vexed and irked, and didn’t even realize I was traumatized until now. Maybe that explains everything.

Our Hum Lit class studied the Bible as part of the curriculum, and the professor made it absolutely clear that the Bible was just another work of literature, the product of human hands r”l, and would be studied accordingly. Fresh from Yeshiva, I protested loudly, and rather than use the assigned New Oxford Bible translation, which I soon realized was flawed and inaccurate in several places, I daily brought in my “Mikraot Gedolot.” Every incorrect translation I corrected, every “contradictory” passage I explained as the Sages did, and every question he had on the text I swatted away. He got more miserable by the day, often cutting me off and not letting me speak.

And then one day he asked me to see him after class, and I did. My professor – interestingly enough – had attended yeshiva in his youth and so was familiar enough with the Hebrew original to know that I was right but had lapsed years earlier in his observance and Jewish commitment. He did not appreciate my theologizing the Bible, as I did not appreciate his secularizing it.

At our meeting, he shared his concerns. He didn’t mind the discussions as much as he did my assumption that the Bible was the Word of G-d and had to be analyzed with respect, humility and sensitivity. That assumption had no place or even standing in a secular university, and then he popped the question: “Why are you here? You belong in yeshiva!”

At the time, I was too young and innocent to realize the great offense that I should have taken and the trauma inflicted upon me. Imagine – a professor telling a student that his views are so unwelcome he should leave and find another place to study! Today, a professor who suggested that would be tarred and feathered, ridiculed and scorned, lambasted and fired after he took the required sensitivity training courses so that he should be able to re-enter society and not be forever banished to the wilderness.

We weren’t so fragile then, apparently, and so I simply responded that he is right – I do belong in Yeshiva – but, nonetheless, if I have some expertise in one of the books in the curriculum, and in its original language, I should be allowed to share it, and especially since the class seemed very interested in what I had to say (or at least – it was the 1970s – enjoyed seeing any professor successfully refuted by a student). I actually appreciated the dialogue, his sentiments, our exchanges and the rest of the semester. He even directed me – and only me – to answer a finals essay comparing something from the Bible to another work of literature (the rest of the class had a choice of essays) and I simply refused, noting on my exam that on religious principle I do not compare G-d’s word to that of human beings.

The writers herein went on protest the use of various tracts in the “Western” canon, “narratives of exclusion and oppression [that] can be difficult to read as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.” (There goes “The Great Gatsby.”) They also protested a classmate who urged the teacher not to assign Toni Morrison books because they had been studied already in high school; such a request was “insensitive.” And they found that, too often, the great works of literature traumatized some students and silenced others.

Memo to writers: get over yourselves and grow up. Part of maturity is learning how to deal with all types of people from all types of backgrounds, even with people who are so clueless and insensitive that they would try to impose blasphemous views on a naïve teenager fresh from years of learning Torah. The writers – and their sympathizers, which might constitute a majority of young people today – seem to feel that they have a constitutional right not to be offended, and that if they ever are offended, the fault lies with the offenders who must be officially silenced, sometimes (if they are fellow students) expelled, sometimes (if they are professors) dismissed, and always dispatched for sensitivity training that is right out of Mao’s Little Red Book.

Imagine, just imagine, if rather than rebuked and put in their place, a professor had said to them: “Why are you here? You belong in another school. Here we study the classics, here we challenge minds, here we confront our premises, here we learn to hold our emotions in check and engage our minds.” Yeah, right.

Naturally, the University has already caved. The curricula will be adjusted, the faculty is on notice that “trigger warnings” must be issued in case a problematic passage is assigned for reading or discussed in class, and everyone is on notice to walk on eggshells around the highly sensitive, i.e., anyone who wants to bully others into silence. What a shame that is – an insult to the university (any university), to their fellow students and to these students themselves who are grotesquely ill-prepared to enter the real world having lived in a politically correct cocoon their entire lives.

But maybe they are right after all. With the intimidators prevailing, traditional values weakening and free expression stifled, these delicate flowers have found a rapt and receptive audience. Civil society is already under siege. Few have the stomach to fight back against censorship and risk being branded racists, haters, etc. Tolerance is a one-way street. If this is the new normal, then pity higher education.

One thing is true: unprepared as they are for the real world – its frustrations, disappointments, imperfections and, yes, offenses – the writers are unlikely to have any impact beyond the college campus. Except, that is, for the restrictions they impose on their fellow students who actually attend college to learn things they did not know rather than have the tired clichés and biases of their adolescent minds validated. And that seems to be a waste of time and money.

Perhaps, as my professor suggested to me so many years ago, it would be best if they just went elsewhere. And talked only to themselves – after screening any potential conversations for “triggers” that will shatter their cozy world.