Getting New Jersey's Urban Residents Organized is in Everyone's Interests

In a blog published earlier this month, I introduced an important but little-appreciated topic that is at the core of what is ailing our troubled inner cities, that being, a lack of empowered community organizations. As crime and poverty continue to stifle New Jersey's urban areas, it must be noted that if we expect the residents of places like Camden, Newark and Paterson to help themselves, they have to have a place to meet. Literally, there are little if any places to gather, talk about issues, prioritize, network and plan, plan, plan. So often we hear from the residents of the Garden State's wealthier suburbs and rural areas (such as Sussex County) that the first step in solving the problems of our inner cities is getting the people who live there to work together. Or more cynically, we'll read posted snippets like "We've been throwing money at these places for years and things just keep getting worse," and even "if more of this crime continues we'll have to call in the National Guard."

Community self-help and activism are not derived some set of magical powers. It takes specific kind of infrastructure, a unique skill-set, lot of work, and a multitude of relationships to get the ball rolling. People need to not only have the abilities to organize and run gatherings, they need a physical location to hold events.

Martin Luther King Jr. at a local civil rights
meeting in the early 1960's 

Suburban and rural communities don't really have this problem. Small and medium-sized informal gatherings, especially those involving both political parties and major civic organizations, take place at community-oriented venues and even Starbucks or some other local coffeehouse. For larger, more formal gatherings, organizations will approach a local hotel, like the Marriott or Hilton, and rent out a meeting room for a day or two. Conveniently situated in these hotels, organizations will typically utilize their kitchens to provide catering and refreshments. Since almost everyone has a car, transportation and free parking aren't a concern. Sure, this costs money, but everyone chips in, or if the organization has deeper pockets, it pays the hotels directly.

These modern-day meeting facilities are specifically designed for their designated functions. They're all equipped with wireless Internet so everyone's smart device is instantly enabled. Power Point presentations and films can be seen on provided overhead projectors. And, of course, we can't forget tables, chairs and lecterns. Additionally, most also have amplifying equipment built-in, enabling anyone to be heard at even the largest gatherings. It's all very convenient.

Political Scientists and historians actually have a name for the culture that's produced by such gatherings: Civil Society. Perhaps the term rings a bell. Civil Society is made up of all of the clubs, organizations and citizen gatherings that aren't part of any formal governmental structure, yet comprise of one of the essential components of any healthy democratic society. Americans used to be famous for it; in the early 1800's, the famous French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville couldn't help but notice it in every region of the young United States he visited. He devoted entire portions of his masterpiece Democracy in America on the subject.  

In these clubs and organizations - and not really in school - people acquire the essential skills of democratic citizenship. People learn how to act like free, responsible individuals - responsible not only for themselves but their communities as well. These skills aren't so much stressed in any of our public schools these days, which have been more or less hijacked by reformy organizations bent on preparing students to succeed on standardized tests.

These essential skills are the stuff that keeps us free. How to recruit members of an organization. How to elect and sustain leadership. How to create an agenda and run a meeting. How to delegate tasks by committee. How to network within and outside of the organization. How to compromise and draft bylaws and resolutions. How to take collective action in the form of a bake sale, a direct-mail campaign, a demonstration, a write-in, etc.  

Okay, so let's return to our inner cities. If people are the "software" for democracy, meeting places are part of the "hardware." But there isn't any "hardware" to be seen, not any more. So what kinds of things can be done to help the residents of our inner cities help themselves? What "classic" and 21st Century solutions are there?

First, our urban residents need to get online. The Internet is the ultimate network for networking. We need to get people emailing, Tweeting, Facebooking and Blogging. Here the State can make a real difference by funding low or no cost municipal WiFi, or wireless Internet. By creating wireless clouds in our urban areas, we'll increase interactivity, reduce crime and bind neighborhoods together. People cannot organize and solve their own community problems if they're not communicating. Municipal WiFi used to be an exorbitantly expensive proposition, but no more. With bandwidth and equipment prices now at historic lows (and heading lower - thanks "Made in China"!), it's entirely possible to "unwire" places like Newark, Trenton, Camden and Paterson. It all doesn't have to be done at once, and there are many ways to fund it without much public expenditure. Put Internet routers on telephone poles, billboards, traffic lights, etc. Get the place humming.

To promote networking and organizational skills, call in the experts. The State could join hands with Non-governmental organizations and service agencies like AmeriCorps and our state colleges to provide classes at local high schools or community centers (do we even have community centers anymore?) on basic managerial skills.

And what about places to meet? Here, the Legislature can help. Pass laws requiring communities to open neighborhood schools after hours so that urban clubs and organizations have a places to gather. Some funding will have to be provided for security and operations, but remember - this entire plan is to make our cities safer by getting urban residents to work together. It would be, more or less, an anti-crime effort. Any financial investment made by the state would have the potential to more than pay for itself if residents can organize and network.

With everything I am proposing, I will admit, there's are no guarantees. But if our urban centers continue to deteriorate, the costs of policing and aiding them will continue to skyrocket. Before we call in the National Guard, before another round of riots on par with 1967 occurs, promoting urban civic organization and activism is certainly worth a try.

Think about it. As I always say, am I on to something here, or is this all just pie in the sky? Should we help our urban residents help themselves? Isn't it time to brush the cynicism aside, and try something different? I look forward to your comments.

How Can Jersey's Urban Citizens Organize if They Have No Place to Meet?

As the online articles of summertime shootings in New Jersey's neglected, jobless and isolated inner cities begin to ramp up, so do the ignorant, hostile comments that adjoin them. To many Internet readers, these forums are either wholly ignored or regarded as more or less useless - being the sum total of random ranters with too much time on their hands. But even from a non-scientific point of view, they do matter, because in some form, they represent documented, and occasionally comprehensive reactions and discussions from concerned Garden State citizens of all kinds. One kind of comment, however, seems to be more common than all the others. For within the collections of comments that state things like "a tragedy for a girl who had her whole life ahead of her," and "minorities continue to ruin places where we used to leave the doors unlocked," there is one that is worth genuine analysis. It varies, but usually states something like "This violence will continue until the people of Newark/Camden/Trenton/Paterson etc. no longer tolerate it." It's an interesting assumption, because not only have I come across it often on sites like NJ.com and NorthJersey.com but I've heard it countless times in other places. Apparently, according to a sizable minority of those willing to publish their opinions on the issue, crime in New Jersey's cities is a result of a lack of civic awareness, pride, activity or organization on the part of our urban dwellers - or all of those things combined. It's worth noting that most posters do not identify where they're writing from, I think it's safe to assume that many, if not all of them, do not live in these depressing cities, rife with crime and poverty. These posters have little idea of the places they're talking about. That's too bad, because you no longer have to physically go to Trenton, Newark, Camden or anywhere in New Jersey to get a feel for its topography. You can simply visit Google Maps and take a virtual walk around the streets, and witness the extent of the devastation firsthand. And if one has even more time on their hands, I believe they can even use Google Maps to view a series of photos of the same places over time, to see how a specific neighborhood, lot, etc. has changed. The problems of New Jersey's urban centers are complex, of course, and go back decades. But as a former Newark Central Ward teacher and resident, I have to be honest here: if you're going to accuse Newark or Camden's people of a lack of civic spirit or capability to organize, you need to look at the physical geography of such places. In short, what kinds of conditions and structures are present that could enable people to organize and, say, challenge poverty, crime and corruption in such cities? It's a good question, because it matters. America's Revolutionaries had their taverns, where they passionately debated and organized against British rule. Abolitionists and later Civil Rights leaders had their Churches, which functioned as vital incubators of organization and leadership. Newark's former Jewish community had huge, active community centers, especially along what was once High Street (Now MLK Blvd.) All of these institutions - and that's what they were - required time, energy, funding and organization - and space. And now, for the most part, they're gone. Swept away in a tide of history and drowned out by poverty. Aside from their homes and places of employment, most of our state's urban residents lack a "Third Place," where they can simply socialize, which in a free society is the first step in tackling any problem as a community. Think about it another way. Say you're a Newark Central Ward resident, and you want to start some sort of Where would you meet? Really, where? A free or low cost Conference Room  is hard to come by in New Jersey's ailing cities council or club or action group. In the 1920's and 30's, many of Newark's great community gatherings took place in its schools. But under the regime of State Superintendent Cami Anderson, whose contempt for all forms of democracy and civic expression is well known, today this is almost an impossibility. In fact, some parent organizers have even been arrested for posting material on school grounds. It's a tragedy, because much of the city's finest physical structures are completely off limits, or nearly impossible to attain, for meeting, debating and organizing. Okay, so what about other publicly oriented businesses like cafes and coffeehouses? Well you can forget about these too. The last coffeehouse in the Central Ward - a Starbucks - closed in 2009. The event was regarded as so devastating that it was even covered by the New York Times. And what about the Churches? Yes, there are still some churches active in our inner cities, but aside from Sunday services, they offer few other services for even their own parishioners. And from a practical perspective, from my years and years of walking around Newark and Paterson, I'd say that most Church buildings are locked and sealed shut during the week. So how are the people of our urban areas supposed to organize if they cannot even find a place to congregate? I hope there are some meaningful replies to this blog...am I completely wrong here? Am I on to something?

Echoes of An Infamous Anti-Semitic Jersey Past Are Heard in A New Report

This week the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published its annual report on Anti-Semitic incidents in the Garden State. The results, as reported in many of our area’s papers, are mixed. While it is true that an overwhelming majority of Jewish people living in New Jersey go about their daily lives without having to face this historic scourge, still, 78 incidents occurred in 2013. According to the ADL, these incidents involved acts of vandalism, assault and threats. 

Racism and discrimination in all their perverse forms are bad, but ‘modern’ Anti-Semitism is its own kind of historical nemesis. I’ve been in education for over a decade, and I can honestly tell you, most New Jerseyans, despite our state’s Holocaust awareness requirement, fail understand the danger of organized Anti-Semitism to humanity in particular, and it’s long history in New Jersey (of all places!). It’s worth a retelling.

Medieval anti-Semitism is rooted in the Christian Bible, which has been interpreted as blaming Jews for the conspiracy to arrest and kill Jesus. Much of this hatred was fed to Europeans over the centuries by the Catholic and later Luther-inspired Protestant Churches. To be fair, this belief in collective Jewish guilt has been formally renounced by the Roman Catholic Church and most Protestant Churches. Over the past three decades, in fact, the Papacy has gone to great lengths to embrace good Jewish-Catholic relations through Papal Synagogue visits and various edicts. I do not think that I would be inaccurate in stating that, at least in New Jersey, if any Christian priest or preacher got up on next Sunday morning and told his or her congregation that Jews were “Christ Killers” the parishioners would simply walk out, throw the preacher out, or both. But this kind of anti-Semitism isn’t what motivates modern day Jew haters anyway.

Modern, formerly "respectable” Anti-Semitism is not ancient. It’s not even German. It’s not from the Arab world and it had nothing to do with the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades. It wasn’t born in the desert or amongst some maniacal civilization. It emerged, largely, from one of the most cosmopolitan centers of European civilization, from a city that still prides itself on its Baroque architecture, its cobblestone streets, and its sumptuous coffeehouses. Modern-day Anti-Semitism was born in Vienna, Austria, between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I.

These people, whoever they are – be they punks, White Supremacists, or Klansman, who are going around New Jersey committing acts of hatred are believers, for the most part, in this kind of anti-Semitism. Though Modern Anti-Semitism’s origins are a bit complex, the movement really crystalized and gained respect and electoral power in Turn-of-The-Century, cosmopolitan Vienna. It was there that, in the effort to gain votes and create some kind of national identity out of a diverse population, leaders pointed to the Jews as a common enemy. These anti-Semites stipulated that Jews, both religious and secular, were a cancer on humanity. These people preached, to great success, that Jews, through their achievements in the professions, were climbing to the top of their fields in a conspiratorial plan. This “plan,” was to be executed at the ‘right’ moment, on some kind of international basis, when Jews would strike to enslave and degrade all Christians. The conspiracy theory took several forms, but this was the most common one. In the meanwhile, most Anti-Semites said, Jews, by increasing their power and influence, were out to make the lives of Christians impoverished and marginal.

The moment of “respectable crystallization,” happened with the election of one of the great urban mayors of the early 20^th century: Dr. Karl Lueger. Today Austrians like to forget about his intense anti-Semitism, as he was responsible for much of the modernization of Vienna. But at the time, Lueger’s intense hatred for the Jewish people – who comprised of a sizable minority of Vienna itself – was well known. Lueger used his tremendous oratory and persuasive powers to convince city voters that Jews were the main problem. In 1907, a few years before his death, Lueger told one reporter:

“A Jew must remember that neither Germany, nor Austria, nor Poland is his land. He must remember that wherever he may be, he is a stranger to the native population…I do not care about the welfare of the Jews. If their life here is miserable, let them go away.”

Today any big city mayor who made such a statement would be branded as crazy…insane. But these were the words of one of the most popular, elected politicians in the civilized world, and his words would not go unheeded. Under Lueger’s rule, Jews would be discriminated against, publicly assaulted, ridiculed and pushed out of organizations of all kinds. But his admirers were many, including one down-on-his-luck, failed artist and frequent inhabitant of the city’s homeless shelters and rooming houses named Adolf Hitler.

Now wait just a second. I thought this was a blog about New Jersey? What does an infamous Austrian mayor who died in 1910 have anything to do with anti-Semitism in, say, Newark or the Jersey Shore?

The respectability that Lueger gave to such hatred had transatlantic consequences, and this influence spread quickly. How quickly? He died in 1910; within a decade his organized, articulate anti-Jewish rhetoric would assist the growth of two of New Jersey’s most infamous – and powerful – hate groups: the Klan and the Nazis.

The Anti-Semitic Klan, partly due to the ‘respectability’ that Lueger and others had given the hatred of Jews and Judaism, spread rapidly here. Klan groups and “klaverns” organized by the thousands and the repressive organization established its headquarters in Newark. Amazing as the sight would be today, during holiday parades in several New Jersey towns and cities, Klan members marched by the hundreds – even the thousands – to promote their nefarious cause. Their organization published newsletters and newspapers and endorsed candidates running for local and state offices. 

The Klan held huge ceremonies in the summertime, particularly at the Shore. One New York Times article claims that a July 1924 rally near Long Branch drew 20,000 supporters. The Klan participated in open, publiziced acts of terrorism. In April of 1922 they burned a huge cross on top of Paterson’s Garrett Mountain that was visible throughout much of Passaic County. While publicly promoting itself as another civic organization, Klansmen terrorized Jews, Catholics and immigrants through assaults and even bombings. Amazing right? Yes, it happened right here, in New Jersey. And it wasn’t over.

The Klan’s national power faded in the late 1920’s due to a variety of factors, one being a major murder scandal involving its Grand Wizard. The movement’s deterioration was reflected in New Jersey as well. But by the early 1930’s, Anti-Semitism was back in the Garden State and in a big, terrifying way.

In the years before the Second World War, New Jersey was home to a major

New Jersey Nazi Camp, Andover, 1938

Nazi movement that called itself “The Bund.” Like its evil twin in Germany, New Jersey’s Nazis dressed up in brown uniforms, held gatherings in beer halls, and established their own “base camps” in places like Andover. Yes, I am not kidding here. In the mid-1930’s, there was a Nazi camp, with real, goose-stepping, Hitler saluting, anti-Jewish stormtroopers, in Sussex County.

Area residents, like my grandmother who lived in Irvington at the time, grew concerned and frightened. When a collection of Nazi organizations from New Jersey and New York sold out Madison Square Garden for a rally in the mid-1930’s, the movement was on the borderline of – and its frightening to say – respectability. I would like to report that it was the outrages of the Nazis in Germany that led to the Jersey Bund’s decline, and that is frequently taught, but it was more likely the efforts of the state and Federal governments to squash the movement that probably brought on its end. And, of course, The War.

So here we are again, sort of, but on a much smaller basis. The Neo-Nazis or the Anti-Semites or whomever you want to call them are in our presence, but they’re not respectable. The average New Jersey resident, of course, knows from our present perspective what these kinds of ideas lead to: violence, mass death, collective sadism…etc. We’re all decent people, right? We’ll continue to work together as a diverse community towards the future. Yes, we’ll have our disagreements, but this is all our land. We still believe in those ideals…don’t we?

Man, I hope so. But the ADL’s report of 78 Jersey-based incidents in 2013 does shake my faith. A little bit.   

As the Assembly Grapples with College Costs, It Bears Asking: Why Go to College Anyway?

This week the Assembly's Committee on Higher Ed is hearing from a wide assortment of voices - college presidents, faculty, students, graduates - in an effort to get to the bottom of why a university education has become so expensive in New Jersey, and what can be done about it. And from press reports, it's obvious to see that the committee, in the end, needs to grapple with the central questions concerning the complex relationship between students, expectations and a university education. Why should anyone go to college anyway? What is the value of a university education? What is the university? What's the point of attending? I often tell my high school students this: while it is true that college graduates make more money overall during their lifetimes than others, in the end, that's notthe purpose of a university education. A college education is not the same, in any respect, as technical training. Most professors will not care, at least not at the outset, of what your career plans are. In the end, and I believe this is not an oversimplification, a university (and the education it provides) is about the conversation. Or rather, it is a conversation. It's about people learning and exchanging ideas, generating new ones, publicizing concepts, accepting some while changing or disregarding others. We see this information exchange primarily in the form of the classroom and lecture hall, as well as in publishing in text and on the Internet. But, I remind them, don't let the lush lawns or the stately stone buildings or the basketball games fool you; those are beside the point. If you want to succeed in college and get the most out of it, you've got to accept the university for the idea factory that it is. I attended Rutgers University during most of the 1990's where I earned my B.A. in history and my M.A. in political science. While I knew that I wanted to become a high school teacher, I also accepted the fact that I probably wouldn't learn the ins-and-outs of the educational business until I was in it. That's not why I went to college. Though I earned several scholarships and fellowships during my time at Rutgers, I managed to graduate with some debt. It was worth it, because going to Rutgers transformed me -  or rather - set me on a path to become a better critical thinker, and a better communicator in both reading and writing. It boosted and directed my lifelong quest to learn. My experience at Rutgers introduced me, truly, to the complexities of this world and transformed a teen that believed in absolute truths into a young adult that was highly suspicious of all forms of authority in a world of gray. I attended Rutgers because I knew that there I would be exposed to all sorts of voices, both living and dead, emanating from the arts and sciences. I went because, to really understand well, at least for myself, I needed to learn and debate the great ideas with great minds in the classroom environment. This debate took many forms; sometimes oral, sometimes written, but always, alwayscentering on ideas. If you don't like ideas, if you disdain reading, if every second behind a desk grappling with abstract notions is viewed as a form of punishment, then by all means, don't go to college. It's not for everyone; and just because you don't want to go to college, it's not indicative of an inexorable slide into poverty. There are ways people can add ample value to their labor through technical training and other experience. I know many car mechanics, truck salesmen and restaurant managers who make a fine living and I know many college grads who are dead broke. College is not a gateway to riches - or at least riches in monetary form. It is an important credential, no doubt, but as a credential, I do not know of a singlebachelor's program that leads directly and immediately to a secure, lifelong job. No way. And any program that claims to guarantee a lifelong a job is being dishonest.   Students need to understand that college - at least the undergraduate experience - goes on for a long time; really for half a decade. It's not something that you can 'wing' per se, especially in the great universities like Rutgers, NYU, Princeton or UCLA. Getting through college requires a real shift in priorities, especially the priorities of the mind. This is why I have so much respect for those who have to work their way through college or come to the university in mid to late adulthood. They know that the average adult has zillions of priorities to cope with, but to be intellectually healthy and to grow, regardless of whatever situation you find yourself in, your curiosity and willingness to learn must be a prized value. It's true what so many grandparents tell their children: no one, ever, can take away what you've learned and earned, at least not what is intellectually earned. And perhaps in the end it may be all you ever have. Okay, perhaps I'm waxing too poetically here. I apologize for droning on. But we need to be honest with our young people about what a university education is, and what it is not, and what it can be expected to do.

Thanks Go to Montreal For First Opening My Eyes to the World

Growing up in Parsippany in the 1980’s wasn’t exactly like finding oneself situated in the middle of a cultural universe. Looking back from this global, hyper-connected age, I am only now beginning to understand how isolated and limited we were as children in the suburbs of Morris County. During most of the year, aside from perhaps hanging out with some friends, riding our bikes or chatting (locally) on the phone, there wasn’t much to do. The boredom could be agonizing.

I don’t blame my mother. A working single mom with two boys, she did the best she could to give us a middle class lifestyle in a decent neighborhood. We lived in one of Parsippany’s largest apartment complexes, Troy Hills Village. It was relatively safe, green, well kept and affordable. But it was boring, boring as all hell. And unless you drove, there wasn’t really anywhere to go. It’s not like I could take a bus to the Rockaway Mall, not that it was such an exciting destination, anyway. And until my later teen years I was too young to venture into Manhattan, which at that time was going through a very dangerous phase anyway.

But once in a while I’d get a break from the mundane. And the biggest break, one I remember so well, was when my mother and her then-boyfriend took me on a business trip to Montreal. It was 1982.

The 80’s were hard on the cities of the Northeast, especially New Jersey and

President Carter tours the South Bronx in the late 1970's;
for many of New Jersey's suburban and rural kids,
this was the common urban image of the 1970's and 80's

New York. Crime was rampant (and, at least in Newark, is again) and urban deterioration was at an all time high. The experiences I had with cities were limited and stressful ones. Aside from some field trips to New York Museums and a few frightening journeys down Newark’s dilapidated Springfield Avenue, I hadn’t seen much. And what I had seen I didn’t like. Oh, and there were those trips to the old Yankee Stadium, which introduced me to the devastated South Bronx at its worst.

This is why my first Montreal visit blew my mind. Just a six hour drive away (traffic permitting) from Northern New Jersey, it was like being transported to an alternate, albeit French-speaking urban universe. The streets were relatively clean. Public transportation was widely available. People actually treated the city as a place they wanted to be, not had to go to. When was the last time, as a New Jerseyan, you found yourself chatting with a friend at an outdoor café in Newark or Trenton or Elizabeth? My point exactly.

I want to do it again this summer with my son, if I can. I remember the drive there being just spectacular. Interstate 287, which I took every day and bisects Parsippany, turned into 87 which cut through the greening Hudson River Valley. Heading north through Albany, I was amazed at what I saw of the Adirondacks, and their snow-tipped peaks of early Spring. The Canadian Border was a blast (“don’t say anything or joke about smuggling!” my mother warned) and to see all of the signs change from English to French instantly widened my world. Canada isn’t the moon, but Quebec isn’t exactly home, and through my 11 year old eyes, that concept was beyond awesome.

We stayed in the Holiday Inn in Longueil, which is more or less the Hoboken of the Montreal Area. Situated opposite of the island city, I got a chance to survey this new, foreign land and all of its topography. There was the Saint Lawrence River – which seemed more alive than the Hudson – and the soaring bridges going over it. Montreal even had its own skyline, which looked more developed than what I had been expecting (most of the books on Montreal that I reviewed at the Central Junior High School library were dated from the late 60’s).

I remember my first sojourn into Montreal’s vast and efficient subway system,

Montreal's Metro: Efficient and Beautiful

The Metro. I recall the hush of the stations; everything was so much quieter and swifter than in New York. The trains ran on rubber tires. The stations were, or at least seemed, clean and safe and extremely colorful. The multicolor tiles, the red, illuminated exits proclaiming “Sortie,” the soft blues and the polished steel really struck me as remarkable. Public transportation, I thought, when well planned and affordable, brought a city its own form of freedom. And then there was the French. The smoothness of the French language, the elegant elocution of the Francophones, the children who seemed like little geniuses to me because they chatted in French with such ease. French advertisements, newspapers, magazines, directional signs…I wasn’t in America anymore. This wasn’t Parsippany. There was, I was realizing for the first time in my life, a real, live world out there. Functioning, working, buzzing…

I felt so far away from home and I loved it. The candy was different – it seemed richer, thicker and more chocolaty. The warm loaves of bread were like heaven and the breakfasts – really just ordinary crepes – tasted divine. For the first time in my life, America, the English language, the Yankees, all those things, were clearly not at the center of everybody’s life.

We went on a bus tour of the city that took us all over, from the Parisian streets of the Old City to the heights of Mount Royale. I remember being on top of the mountain, situated in a park in the middle of the city, and being able to survey the entire metropolitan area. It was exhilarating to see the vastness of my new foreign conquest; it went on and on. The churning St. Lawrence glimmered in the distance, peppered with islands. The skyscrapers and steeples of the city sat at my feet. People went on, living differently, living lives completely not oriented towards me or where I was from. Just wonderful!

We spent two or three full days there before heading home. I didn’t get to see Montreal for another decade, and I remember missing it terribly. I missed it so much, in fact, that during my undergraduate years at Rutgers I joined a student travel board just to plan trips there, and I returned at least four more times. Then I really got a chance to explore it, while at the same time doing a world of good for thousands of my fellow students at Rutgers-Newark, who otherwise, due to the realities of Newark in the 1990’s, couldn’t venture off campus at night – at least not on foot.

That first trip really opened my eyes to the wider world, and taught me that there’s really joy in going to a place where you and your culture are not the dominant one. It forces you to sit back and observe and learn. This summer, I hope to head back there again, to give my son his own first taste of the non-American world.

  

Some of the Earliest Warnings of the Hitler Menace Came from New Jersey

One of our state’s greatest treasures can be found in its academic institutions, particularly in the two largest ones, Rutgers and Princeton. It’s a shame that more people in New Jersey do not take advantage of the numerous free lectures, seminars, exhibits and presentations that occur at these institutions on a frequent basis. Just a glance at their well-publicized calendars shows a wide variety of speakers, many authorities and trendsetters in their industries and disciplines. Every year, present and former governors, senators, scholars, teachers, businessmen and witnesses take to the lecterns of these schools to tell riveting stories, propose innovative ideas and sometimes, to warn.

This is where it gets interesting. Many of the greatest events in history, both famous and infamous, have been discussed, dissected, analyzed in our universities. But there have been times in the past, right here in the storied academic halls of New Jersey, which witnessed the most prophetic, dire warnings. Like a scene from a Spielberg movie, there have been times when the halls of Princeton and Rutgers have invited in voices from the political wilderness, to accurately inform of great peril.

Through my research, I found one of those moments. I wish I could have been there. The setting was right out of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The scene was Princeton’s stately, neo-gothic Mc Cosh Hall. There, inside, in a lecture hall that is perhaps one of the most architecturally impressive of its kind, a professor took to the lectern. It was a cold November day in 1931.

Mc Cosh's famous lecture hall, Princeton University

First, it should be stated that it wasn’t the only lecture that day, or week, on campus. According to The Daily Princetonian, other speakers were discussing the current political issues in the Hoover Administration. Another, Dean Wycks, gave a talk on “Mystical Appreciation.” Several professors were also to give a series of short talks on their most recent books. The Garden Theater was showing a play titled “Traveling Husbands,” which promised, in its half-page ad, to be told with “Speed and Sparkle…You’ll enjoy every minute of it!”

But this lecture was different, though we can only see that from our present point of view. The talk was given by one Professor William Starr Myers of Princeton’s Politics Department. The subject was one that was really yet to be addressed in higher academic circles, but Myers now felt that it deserved much wider attention. The title: Hitler of Germany As Menace to the World.

It was, to be honest, a rather audacious title for a lecture at the time. Germany in 1931 was still a functioning, troubled democracy and an economic mess. Whether the recently defeated state would hold together under the then-present circumstances was debatable. In earlier articles the university paper, when mentioning Hitler at all, described him inaccurately as a “prank” or a “monarchist” seeking to reestablish the Kaiser to power. But this was one of the first lectures that I’ve found where a speaker clearly says no, this man is dangerous, not in some abstract political way, but someone for Americans to be very, very aware of.

Myers opened his talk by comparing Hitler to “Scarlet Fever,” then a horrendous contagion universally feared. Hitler, like a tumor, was taking advantage of Germany’s chaotic economic situation to gain absolute power:

“Hitler has used many of his own pet prejudices in outlining his party’s declaration of principles, especially anti-Semitism and state control of all institutions. These ideas have gone far toward popularizing National Socialism in Germany…”

The professor went on to warn his audience that Hitler’s dictatorial aspirations included foreign conquest, or what Hitler would call "Lebensraum" as well:

“If however Hitler does gain control, he no doubt will try to expand to Russia…an attempt which might kill him off and bring a happy ending to National Socialism.”

Myers observations were dead on. Hitler did certainly come to power as part of a democratic coalition of right-wing political parties in 1933. And the dictator’s obsession with destroying Judaism and the Soviet Union would undeniably consume much of Nazi Germany’s energies. Hitler indeed killed himself in his Berlin bunker in April of 1945 as Soviet troops closed in.

In the coming months, Princeton welcomed several other speakers who discussed Nazism and its possible widespread effects on Europe and the rest of the world. But from my research it was only Myers' prophetical voice, speaking in the earliest days of the fascist crisis, who got it right. And it happened right here, in New Jersey.