I have had the distinct pleasure of meeting Mr. Jackson Toby, a professor emeritus of sociology at Rutgers University, where he was director of the Institute for Criminological Research. His latest book is “The Lowering of Higher Education in America: Why Student Loans Should Be Based on Credit Worthiness.” Mr. Toby is the companion of a long-time client of mine, who is also a pleasure, and whom I have been a patient advocate for many years. They are both 90-plus years young.
I am writing this because I continue to enjoy the opinion editorials that Mr. Toby continues to write. I wanted to share the latest one published in the Wall Street Journal that is related to the pandemic titled, “My Benevolent Incarceration in a New Jersey Senior Home.” This is an excellent article from Mr. Toby’s inside viewpoint living in an assisted living facility during the COVID-19 pandemic. NJ Governor Murphy called him about the article which was quite a thrill.
I am heartened by this couple’s relationship and have enjoyed being able to assist them with matters of health and insurance. Mr. Toby is never without a book, a sense of humor and a gentleman’s style of dress. One of the things I am impressed the most about him is his mental acuity and sharpness. He doesn’t miss a beat. His companion is equally impressive, intelligent and charming.
Sometimes the work of being a patient advocate can be hard but there are distinct joys involved when you’re lucky enough to have wonderful clients that age with wisdom and grace such as Mr. Toby and his companion.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-benevolent-incarceration-in-a-new-jersey-senior-home-11591400430
About Jackson Toby
Jackson Toby, Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Rutgers University, was Director of the Institute for Criminological Research at Rutgers from 1968 to 1994. He did his graduate work at Harvard. He wrote his Ph. D. dissertation under the guidance of sociological luminary, Professor Talcott Parsons, on the relationship between educational maladjustment and juvenile delinquency. In the field of criminology his concept of "stake in conformity" helped shift the research emphasis from trying to find out why offenders commit criminal acts to finding out why most people control ever-present impulses to break social rules.
Beginning in 1980, he began conducting research and writing in academic journals and in big-circulation newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about school violence. He took the controversial position that one cause of school violence is that not enough public school students who hate school drop out. Putting in a good word for dropping out of school resulted in his being interviewed by Jane Pauley on the Today Show and being interviewed on television by Charlie Rose. His article, "Let Them Drop Out: A Response to Killings in Suburban High Schools" appeared in The Weekly Standard on April 9, 2001.
His serious interest in deviant behavior led him to write about a seemingly frivolous subject, streaking, published in a 2005 issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology. Despite the subject matter and a photograph of a 1974 streaker in the published article, the article is not lurid. Toby himself neither observed nor participated in the behavior analyzed in his article. The closest he comes to streaking is playing squash three times a week, appropriately clothed. Professor Toby has been listed in WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA for more than forty years.
An ardent believer in the value of Clubhouses to help persons with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder recover sufficiently to continue their educations and obtain employment, he is the author of newspaper articles that say this and is currently Vice President of the Laurel House Middlesex Board of Directors. In the past he has served on the Boards of NAMI-NJ and Triple C Housing Inc.
After a half-century of teaching sociology and criminology, he retired from Rutgers University in 2003 and and completed the book he had been working on sporadically for many years, "The Lowering of Higher Education: Why Financial Aid Should Be Based on Student Performance." It was published in 2009. Reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and other publications, it was generally praised enthusiastically.