Keywords: USA, Netherlands, longitudinal studies, developmental research, Pittsburgh Youth Study, adolescent development, studies of Dutch youth.
Transcript
DAVID FARRINGTON: This is the American Society of Criminology, November, 2012. And I'm David Farrington. I'm interviewing Rolf Loeber for posterity. And I thought I'd begin-- Rolf and I have known each other for about 30 years. So we're very good friends and very comfortable with each other's presence. So I thought I'd begin by summarizing Rolf's career. Of course, he can correct me if I get anything wrong. Rolf came from the Netherlands. He graduated originally in psychology from Amsterdam. Then he moved over to Canada and got his PhD in clinical psychology at Queens University at Kingston and became a clinical psychologist for 10 years in Kingston, Ontario. And then suddenly, he made a dramatic change in his life. He left Kingston. He left the security of being a clinical psychologist. In 1979, he moved to the Oregon Social Learning Center to work with Jerry Patterson. And then after four years there he then moved to Pittsburgh to become a professor-- an assistant professor, initially, and eventually a distinguished university professor of psychiatry and psychology and epidemiology. So he's been in Pittsburgh now since 1984, I think. And also, that's only a small part of his life, because he's also a professor of juvenile delinquency and social development at the Free University in Amsterdam. And he also has a career in Irish history, which we'll talk about a bit later on. So in terms of the highlights of Rolf's career, I think the main highlights, to my mind, are three longitudinal studies that he's been involved in, which I'll ask him to talk about, and also work with our three study groups, which I've have collaborated with him. And in much of this, he's collaborated with his wife, Magda, who's been an essential ingredient in all of this. So I'll ask Rolf about that as well. But first of all, the first question would be what do you think are your major contributions to knowledge?
ROLF LOEBER: Very hard question. I think in order to know that, one has to probably survey the quotation index and—
DAVID FARRINGTON: Citations.
ROLF LOEBER: —see which papers are cited. And I don't know, really. But I think what I was really interested in is trying to understand development from different angles and different professions. Because criminology's one profession, but I think psychiatry, psychology, and epidemiology each have unique angles on this. And trying over time to actually have one angle benefit from the other angles is really a very nice challenge. Because in a way, it's to be talking about different models that need to be inter-related. And also, how are these different aspects, these different avenues related to interventions? So anyway, coming back to your question. It's hard for me to say what is really the most significant. I think probably the thing that has the highest consequence is to study the longitudinal studies because it engaged not only ourselves to a very high degree, and yourself, fortunately, alongside the Cambridge study, which is quite remarkable that you had so much input with that study. But what happened is we engaged a large number of people who all were able to do analysis and advanced science. So if I think about probably the largest contribution has been to set a stage for this collective enterprise, engaging other people in ourselves could, in the analysis of what I think are very good data, I think that's probably the most significant contribution.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Well, I think pol—
ROLF LOEBER: No, no. Go ahead.
DAVID FARRINGTON: I was going to say I think that the most wonderful contribution is really carrying through the three longitudinal studies. I think particularly the Pittsburgh boys' study, where you followed up all those boys from age 7 to age 35 with very regular interviews so it's possible to track their development one time, to investigate the risk factors over time, to investigate effects of life events over time. I think that's a wonderful study. And then you managed to continue with a similar Pittsburgh girls' study, which I think is the first time anybody has had such a detailed large-scale study of the development of girls over time. So that's also a great achievement. And then also you had the developmental trends study, which is focusing-- it's a smaller-scale study, but focusing more on conduct disorder and psychiatric problems. So I think all those three studies are tremendously important. And obviously, I think you're only halfway through your career. But [LAUGHS] what do you think can be done to ensure that they live on beyond you?
ROLF LOEBER: No, that's very nice to say. So the Pittsburgh youth study, the data is being deposited gradually [INAUDIBLE], to data archive. And that is terrific, and OJJDP helps us with that. But it's a multi-year process, because the data it's a raw data as well as constructs that are being transferred, so the constructs are important from the angle of doing analysis. The girls' studies is not yet ready for depositing, and my co-investigators, Stephanie Stepp and Alison Hipwell, are put in charge with me at this stage. But eventually that will be transferred to a national data center. And then coming back to the Pittsburgh youth study, we-- Magda, my wife, and I have basically arranged to for Pittsburgh youth study data to be also transferred to the Netherlands, partly because I'm Dutch, but also NSCR in the Netherlands is the prime or the premier kind of criminological center. And I feel that they can benefit from having such good data. So anyway, that's it making as we speak.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Well, I think that's absolutely wonderful to make all these data sets available for wider use. And it's a wonderful legacy. And I think the criminology-- in particular, you have the Pittsburgh youth study data. As you know, we've just yesterday had a new division of the American Society of Criminology approved—
ROLF LOEBER: It's an achievement.
DAVID FARRINGTON: --developmental and life course criminology, so we're very happy about that. And I wondered, what do you think are the most important questions in development and life course criminology do you think should be addressed in the future?
ROLF LOEBER: That's quite a perplexing and difficult question, as you know, because obviously we need replication of major findings. And that can be encouraged with that type of organization. But what I'm particularly concerned about is how to bridge better the connection between life course developmental criminology based on longitudinal data and interventions. Because obviously, interventions will continue to expand. The interventions will continue to be attaching or attacking particular problematic behaviors at different ages. The whole issue about what are the data that are necessary the best interventions has not been, I think, fully resolved. Screening is always an issue. And although we have better screening instruments for older populations, not necessarily-- I think the whole work on what needs to be done for younger populations and for girls is still very much open for development. So to connect-- tightening up the connection. And related to that is the ability, actually, to use longitudinal data to model interventions. So the whole issue about taking data sets and then actually use parameters derived from data to mathematically model to do an intervention on one thing versus another thing, or one screen deriving a certain population than actually doing the intervention. What are basically not only the effects of that, but also what are the cost benefits of different strategies? So again, I think that the intervention literature can-- that experimental literature can benefit better from the longitudinal data because most interventions are restricted number of follow-ups have restricted target populations, information, the discarded assessments, and so on. And so I think the longitudinal studies, because of their wide variety of assessments, actually provide a kind of building ground, if you want, for better knowledge.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Yeah. I was interested in our homicide that we had the estimates of. Using Pittsburgh youth study data, we had the estimates of the impact of intervention programs on the number of homicides in the United States. Is this what you mean when you're talking about that modeling and trying to estimate the impact of interventions?
ROLF LOEBER: Right, and I think we may only have scratched the surface what I think that eventually, to my guess, would be really a very blossoming type of enterprise.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Yeah, it's interesting that you relate to intervention, because one of the things you've always tried to do in your career is to link up the fundamental developmental literature with the applied international literature. And this is one of the aims of our three study groups. So I wonder if you'd like to talk about them. Because I think that that was an aim of the study groups.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah. Just thinking back about what-- with the tree study groups, we started out with a serious and violent offenders, and David and I ran the study group. And then the second one was on child delinquents. And the third one, recently completed, was on the transition between juvenile delinquency and adult crime. So why we did-- mean, this is fairly hyperactive to do all these things—
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: [INAUDIBLE]. However, I must say I enjoyed the study groups. Although, at times, they were a great pain. You've got deadlines and getting everyone lined up to do the work, and so on. But the important thing, I think, of the study was it was kind of like an intellectual forum. In a way, all of us need input from other people. We need to make sure the different perspectives are presented. We need to not have all the people that agree with us. But certainly, I think we need to have people that can play the game. I think we carefully-- you and I carefully selected who was going to be on the study groups. And then we basically-- I think what was unique rather than compared to an edited book-- we had to meet. And we had to say-- we said to them, well, these are the things we need to sort. How would you do it? And we pressed this on them, time and again, every meeting. And then they started to play around with things over and above what they knew. So that was very good. Because, in a way, you had all these great people that work with us. But we asked them to make the next step. And they liked that. And they got really into it. And then with the editing-- and we asked them to write, of course-- but then there was quite a lot of molding of the text, rather than saying well, you know, it's a nice chapter. We'll put it in the book. We just continued to shape this. And I think the shaking was really important not only in terms of quality, but in terms of the topic area. What is that we really need to know? And you and I had a very close relationship in this, because we certainly complement each other, but also, I think we basically agreed how to do things. So with that agreement between the two of us how to basically ask people to do things they've never done before. And that really was set up with these three study groups. And then the other thing that happened, I think, that was fortuitous since I was appointed about 15 years ago in Holland as a professor, I decided that aside from a little bit of teaching that I needed to do, that to make things worthwhile, repetitive study groups in Holland. That put not only the Dutch-European type of data up on the table, but it also forced us to think much more clearly-- how does this relate to the mostly American findings or the British findings or the other European findings? So in a way, they kind of mirror of these Dutch study groups with the American ones. And the last one, they collaborated several times. They met with each other and fired each other on. I think there was a really wonderful, intellectually inspiring kind of exercise. And in Holland, the remarkable thing was it involved professions that were normally not collaborating with each other. It varies between the professions are much stronger in Holland than, say, in the US. Anyway, so that's a long answer to your question.
DAVID FARRINGTON: No, no. I think you've made a wonderful contribution in upgrading the standard of Dutch research, actually, by demanding things from them, I think things that they never thought that they could do before.
ROLF LOEBER: To be frank about this, really, I think I was a very strong taskmaster. I didn't have to get away--
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: --with murder, of course. But things that might have been published in some other venue. But anyway, eventually-- no one killed me.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS] No, I think from-- obviously I wasn't involved with the Dutch study groups, but from my involvement with the America study groups, I think the meetings were essential.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Because people would produce a draft or an outline. And we would meet and discuss it. And we would make it clear to them that we demanded high standards. And we demanded something new. We demanded them to address things which hadn't been addressed before. So it was totally different from an edited volume where they would just send off a chapter.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah, you could go on autopilot and write the usual thing. You know.
DAVID FARRINGTON: But again, coming back to what I said before, I think one of the great things about study groups was trying to get the implications from fundamental research for the policy and then go back from the policy to the fundamental research.
ROLF LOEBER: And the interventions. We certainly covered interventions as well.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Do you think that there was some impact of the study groups on policy? Or do you think there will be some impact of our third study group on policy?
ROLF LOEBER: I find it very difficult to judge, to be honest. If I ask Bertie [INAUDIBLE], will he would say yes. But he's [INAUDIBLE] about many things.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: I do remember, we developed this slogan. This was with the first study group on serious and violent offenders. And in summarizing what needed to be done, we had this key, very tiny statement-- it's never too early to intervene. It's never too late to intervene. And that actually echoed in various settings. And I've been told, also, in the government discussions in the US. So that actually-- it's really remarkable how language is important to convey key decisions that we-- or key conclusions, rather, that we made. Yes, it is very important to intervene with individuals who may have gone down the deep end, might have been very chronically involved in crime, as well as, of course, prevention. So we straddled that, but backed it up, basically, by saying these are the interventions that work. It was all very much empirically driven. And I think that's how business should be conducted.
DAVID FARRINGTON: We always had very glowing introductions to our books. And we like the latest one from by Laurie Robinson--
ROLF LOEBER: Yes.
DAVID FARRINGTON: How very interesting our conclusions were, how NIJ would look at them very carefully, et cetera.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah.
DAVID FARRINGTON: So these glowing introductions from important agency personnel, suggesting that we have an impact.
ROLF LOEBER: We're very lucky with that. And the same, actually, in the Netherlands. The last introduction was written by the minister of justice for-- Holland is a small country. But it's still amazing to find someone who would take the trouble.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Yeah. Well, having done the study group on child delinquents-- that's under 12, really, up to 12, and a series of violent, juvenile offenders. And now we've moved from juvenile delinquency to young adult crime. Is the next one going to be our geriatric offenders? [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: No, this is a touchy topic.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: No, I'm just joking. But I know that NIJ has a study group on girls.
DAVID FARRINGTON: They did. That's right.
ROLF LOEBER: We actually applied for it and didn't get it.
DAVID FARRINGTON: That's right.
ROLF LOEBER: I always thought I was in the wrong gender. [LAUGHTER] I still think-- and looking back at that study group and report. The reporter is valuable, but I would have pushed further. So I think having number two for the study groups on girls and women, I think, is still-- there's lots and lots of opportunities to make progress. The other area that I find appealing is the whole issue of white collar crime.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Oh, right.
ROLF LOEBER: We, of course, have very good data in Pittsburgh on it. But we found that it was actually difficult to finance research on white collar crime or corporate-- what I call corporate, [INAUDIBLE] type of antisocial behaviors. We tried a few times. And actually, Magda, my wife, had done really great studies on lying-- because I think it's a central thing-- deception, and so on. But if I had another opportunity, I'd probably be a good focus on that. Because it's so central, really. Must crime is of a covert nature. Violence is, of course, just a segment of that.
ROLF LOEBER [continued]: At any rate, that came to mind.
DAVID FARRINGTON: When I spoke to you last year-- what you hope to achieve in the future-- obviously, you're still young and full of energy. So I was thinking, what would be your priorities? What, having had these various longitudinal studies and study groups, what you think is the next horizon for the future? What do you think are the priority things that you want to do?
ROLF LOEBER: That's a very good issue. I'm in a bit of a bind about that. Because, on the one hand, I find the subject matter intensely interesting. And it's not that difficult to think of large numbers of topic areas that we could write a paper on and/or a study group, as I mentioned, or do other things. And I'm always a good one for new ideas. I mean, both absorbing it from other people, as well as trying to generate some of it myself. However, I'm bit in a bind about this because my wife retired last year.
ROLF LOEBER [continued]: I like doing things with her, and so if I were to continue until age 90—
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: --pursuing this, I think she would feel left out. And our relationship would probably suffer as a consequence. So the bind that I have is to do interesting things, but not do that totally independent and say to my wife well, you know, it's now 8:00 in the morning. I'll see you sometime at 6 or something. DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: So the reality of the situation is that I will retire in two years time And then will be emeritus and then I can do whatever I like to do. So the issue is what can I still do in criminology? And, of course, there's lots possible. I still certainly want to make sure that [INAUDIBLE] of the data sets is complete or near complete. The other thing that I'm really interested in is mentorship. I mean, I think I can still serve as a mentor to a younger generation without imposing myself on them, but basically trying to make sure that they are landing on their feet. It's something that is very important to me. The Dutch side of my career was much involved with students coming from Holland to Pittsburgh working with us. We had just, I think, about a dozen or so. And that has been very positive. I think they learned from it. We benefited in the process. So that's something that still can continue. But anyway, it's a bit of a crossroad for me, as you can understand. So anyway, perhaps we'll come back to this.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Well, I think this is a very commendable, your altruism and lodging the data and developing the next generation of people. But I was going to ask you about-- throughout your career, you've worked closely with Magda. I mean, how has that gone? I can't imagine working with my wife, I will say. [LAUGHS] How did you manage all these 30 or more years of research?
ROLF LOEBER: I think it's a mystery. Marriage is a total mystery.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: However, when I worked in Canada-- I actually said-- I worked a good number of years in the clinic . And I eventually became a marriage counselor.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: And I've witnessed a variety of shipwrecks of marriages and people in dire straits, and so on. Eventually, I became at dissolving marriages rather than trying to bring things together.
ROLF LOEBER [continued]: So people knew that if you want to have a divorce, you should see me.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: And I'm not kidding. I was the one making sure that women would survive, financially, mentally, with the kids, without kids, professionally, and so on. And I enjoyed that part. It was actually very interesting. And the women were liberated. Once they had conquered their fear, they were very-- they had a better life. So anyway, coming back to my own marriage, why didn't I divorce? The reason is, I think, Magda extraordinary character. She has great strength. She is very curious-- very, very-- great person to work with. If we decide to doing something, then she does. She executes things. If there are problems, we can talk about it. So the life-- we had good marriage, but before [AUDIO OUT] --working, which was actually this [INAUDIBLE] that he forced us to work together. So the marriage was good beforehand. It actually became even more enriching in the course of working together. And also, I think we found very important modus, and that is as a rule, we stop working at 5:00 in the afternoon. So that meant the evenings were very peaceful and were not filled with yet other problems of work. So finding the modus of intense work, very goal-directed, sometimes quite stressful. And then getting time off to recharge until 8 o'clock in the morning when we met for a cup of coffee. And I would open my folder, because at night, I would put all kind of messages in my folders—this needs to be solved, what about this, and so on. And then we would start afresh in a positive mode. So that allowed us to keep the balance not only between ourselves, the two of us, but also balance for one's self. You need to sleep. You don't want to dream endlessly about problems of work.
ROLF LOEBER [continued]: Kind of find a modus that can sustain what actually was very intense work. So now that meant also that the workday, as a rule, was short-ish. Now I get up early.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Just a connection-- in case people think you only work from 8:00 to 5:00, let me tell my story about how one day in Cambridge, at 9 o'clock in the morning in Cambridge, I emailed Al Blumstein and emailed Rolf at 9 o'clock. Both immediately responded, which is 4 o'clock in Pittsburgh. 4 o'clock in the morning. Al was just coming to the end of his shift
DAVID FARRINGTON [continued]: and Rolf was just beginning. Because Alan was a late bird who stayed up all night, up till about 4, and Rolf typically got up about 4. So to say you have a short day from 8 to 5, I think, is a little misleading.
ROLF LOEBER: Well, eventually-- because I-- I am not always getting up a 4—
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: --it depends on really-- I mean, I don't have an alarm, so I just get up when I feel like it. And, you know, how energetic I am. I certainly use the waking hours up to 5 o'clock, as a rule, to do work. That was a kind of-- coming back to Magda, it helped us to survive. I think the problems of executing longitudinal studies are many. I mean, we employed say, roughly, 60 people in the heyday of the study, of the various studies. Lots of personality issues to be dealt with. Financial problems are always there. Grants need to be written and resubmitted, disappointments, new grants, and so on. Very intense. And then, of course, the scholarly thing, the pressure of publishing, the pressure of resubmitting papers and trying to figure out how to get things working. And the data. The data is so complicated. And trying to guide this whole process of the data becoming usable-- also, at the start, when we started data collection, the data collection was paper and pencil. And that was true for Cambridge, as well.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
ROLF LOEBER: So we seen a fantastic transformation in data collection. Also in terms of making the constructs, the lodging of all this, the ability to retrieve things-- all of that has dramatically improved because of the computer technologies. So we were part and parcel of a gradual self-improvement, if you want, with the data, and trying to kind of figure out how to reduce the cost of data collection and use the extra money that was there, then, for other things. So finding-- anyway, a complicated chess play, but very, very interesting. And again, Magda has been absolutely terrific to work with. She has a great sense of direction, consciousness. And then, of course, she wrote a good number of papers that proved that she had a great sense of scholarship in her own right. So it's not just executing studies.
DAVID FARRINGTON: I think she was great at ensuring the quality of the data.
ROLF LOEBER: Oh, sure.
DAVID FARRINGTON: And the very high response rate-- she contributed enormously to organizing all the data collection--
ROLF LOEBER: Exactly.
DAVID FARRINGTON: --ensuring it was a very high quality, indeed.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah, and so she set the standards for the staff. Everyone around her, I think, was impressed by her ability to stick to it, so to say, without becoming autocratic. She just wanted certain things.
DAVID FARRINGTON: You've been incredibly successful at getting money for the projects in order to achieve these studies and achieve exciting research. You must have managed to raise many millions of dollars for the studies. How do you do it? What's your advice to other people about how to get money to run large-scale studies?
ROLF LOEBER: Well nowadays, it's, of course, very, very difficult to [INAUDIBLE] studies. We had, also, the time with us. As you remember yourself, we applied first to NIMAH, it wasn't successful. The priority score, and then eventually went to OJDDP. OJDDP had the national competition. We were one of the three that won. And then, of course, after fiver years they terminated all three projects, irrespective of how well they're doing, and we had to scramble to find alternative funds. So NIMAH made has been very helpful in supporting the study for a long time. But the time is not right for longitudinal studies any more. They're very expensive. Our budget was easily about a million a year. Now we economized as time went, on but it's still extraordinary difficult. The girls' study is more expensive because it's a larger sample, 2,500 girls compared to, say, 1,500 for the boys. So you need multiple employments. You need to have other measurements. The individuals move to other areas of the world. You need to stay in touch with them and make sure that the cooperation rate is high, et cetera. Anyway, so I think that we were lucky to do longitudinal studies in a time period in which the money was still obtainable. Also, I should mention this to you, the department of psychiatry, where we eventually worked in the University of Pittsburgh, in the Medical School, they hired us with the following message. They say you need to do big things. Think big.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: Now you are actually also instrumental in the sense that we had discussions, of course, about how large should the Pittsburgh Youth Study be? And, of course, you was thinking about 411 of the Cambridge study.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: I think your advice was clear. We need a larger sample because we want to understand rarer events, et cetera. So eventually, I think you and Magda and I, we all agreed that it had to be at least 1,500. So that was a very good decision, but also more costly. But it's an example of thinking big rather than thinking small. We could have done a lot of developmental translating study with 160 participations, or there about. So the other thing was that the department of psychiatry was very interested in getting large grants, so you have self-interest there. And they had people in Washington. That helped. So they had their own agents. I'd say that. You see, there's one thing to do a longitudinal study. And I think this applies to the Cambridge study, as well. But the other thing is to actually have an environment that is stable.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Oh, it's essential.
ROLF LOEBER: So we didn't have a department of psychiatry or, in your case, institute of criminology that was going to be there for a few decades and not going to go through crisis and dissolve and have directorships that become highly problematic. It's impossible to do longitudinal studies. Now this is totally outside of our control, of course. We were very lucky the department of psychiatry was stable. We, of course, had no say at all in what happened in the department of psychiatry. But that was the way they ran it. And they knew how to run it. So that's helped us tremendously to state with our job, running these longitudinal studies.
DAVID FARRINGTON: I think it was crucial that you were stable, as well. Both of you stayed in Pittsburgh—
ROLF LOEBER: Well, yes.
DAVID FARRINGTON: --since 1984.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah, we had offers to move, of course, as we became a bit more successful. There were offers. But it's actually strange. I mean, financially we could have done much better, probably, by moving. Because every time you move, your salary goes up-- you hope. But we decided to stay in Pittsburgh. But also, we knew that to run the study from the another city hundreds of miles away or from another country, like the Netherlands, would be enormously hazardous. Because it's really the hands-on type of management, the hands-on data collection that allows us to, I think, do a good job.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Yeah. Well, I think there has to be somebody where the buck stops. At the buck always stopped with you or Magda, really.
ROLF LOEBER: Yes, that's right.
DAVID FARRINGTON: You have to have somebody there clear in charge of it.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah, exactly.
DAVID FARRINGTON: What advice do you think you'd give to young scholars who are just starting out?
ROLF LOEBER: It's very difficult, I find. I think the marketplace now asks for a high degree of knowledge on specific areas. Like, for example, brain scans. It's a specialist science. You can't just turn into a brain scientist from one day to the next. So you need lots of training, and so on. But although I think it's a very necessary science, you see also that people get specialized on certain emotions or certain parts of the brain. And so this tension is really between specialization in-depth and becoming specialists and the expert and generalized approach. And I think it's very difficult. I mean, I try to-- well, not every student that I've had can actually graduate and boast a specialty and a generality, or the broad band.
ROLF LOEBER [continued]: approach to the narrow band. But I think if one were to be a candidate to be were hired by a top university, you need to be able to do both. Now that doesn't mean everyone is to take-- and not everyone can go to Harvard. I think that Harvard is necessary nirvana. But I think what I try to instill in the students is to write both very competent data-driven papers and do one or two reviews. And so the reviews, as you know too well-- the reviews basically allow you to have the bird's-eye view, so to say, of the phenomenon. And the broad view is necessary for two reasons. One is to make sure that you don't lose track of all the small things and see the larger picture. But the other thing is the reader wants to know-- or many readers want to know the large view. They want to know what is really important. All these hundreds and hundreds of variables that we cope with. What is the take-home message that can help them to operate better, to have different systems, or understand phenomena, select the theories? You're interested in theories. I'm somewhat interested in. But you need to, at some point, integrate things. You need to bring things together. Most students take a while to actually achieve that because it's a difficult job. But once they can do it, their citation marks go up and they are more recognized as being. So anyway, so this is a long answer to your question, but I think there's a big tension there that is not solvable by only very specific studies on the narrow topic.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Well, you've got an incredible, stellar record of research in psychology, criminology, psychiatry, and allied topics in the US, and then an incredible record in the Netherlands in similar areas. And they have you your whole other area of life where you're very well-recognized and famous in Irish history, so I understand it. How do you do it? What's your secret of being able to do all these three things in the three different countries?
ROLF LOEBER: That's a good question. I don't know, really, other than that it's great fun. So what happens is I mentioned that I've stopped working usually at 5 o'clock. So the evenings are very peaceful. In the evenings I rummage around. I have a very good working library on history, architecture, and literature. And I collect books. And I eventually write about other topics. And some of it was Magda. Not everything. But Magda is also curious about many things. It has been enormously rewarding to do things with her. It's also a sense of discovery. I think what is important in the social sciences remains important in other areas. There are lots of problems that one can investigate. I might be interested in colonial enterprises and the occupation of the territories by foreign powers and what happens next. Of course, there are many examples, currently and in the past. I happen to know a great deal about Ireland because I think that's my strategy. I want to have at least one country and its-- well, it's Great Britain in the context, and Europe-- of which I know the source material. Because you need to know where manuscripts are and put secondary sources. And then bring things together. So in a way, for me, Ireland-- it could be another country. But it happens to be Ireland because of a variety of reasons. And it's like a kind of an experiment in government, experiment in exploitation, experiment in major changes, both in terms of the population as well and the emigration. As you know, five million people left Ireland to support North America-- and experimentation about how to become independent and how to deal with the cultural heritage of a colonial era. So I'm now involved in the writing of a book. I'm editor, the chief editor of a very big book on Irish architecture. And so I enjoyed it immensely. It's also hard. I'm really standing on my toes. But it's, tremendously interesting. And it's also wonderful to make the trips to Ireland very focused. Because aside from the documentation one needs for a book, visits to the country houses, to the market houses, to churches, et cetera, et cetera-- the built environment-- it's there. And some of it is in ruins and some of it is gone, and a large portion is there. So actually seeing it and photographing it and documenting it in a variety of ways is absolutely fascinating. So it tends to be very exciting. So I don't know exactly why I do this other than--
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: --perhaps I am a sensation see--
DAVID FARRINGTON: Sensation seeking, risk-taking personality, perhaps. [LAUGHTER]
ROLF LOEBER: Yes. I could also spend time-- we don't have television, you see. That's part of the problem.
DAVID FARRINGTON: That's the secret of your success.
ROLF LOEBER: Part of the problem is that we don't get really that diverted. We go once a week to new movies, which I love. But anyway, the other thing is, at the end of the evening, I feel good. I don't have a gap that I say oh gosh, this is terrible evening.
ROLF LOEBER [continued]: Most evenings it's really wonderful. And most evenings-- and this is coming back to your question-- Magda and I do something together for an hour. It could be that we look at maps. It could be that we just enter something that needs to be entered in the computer. Or we figure out a problem. And it has been very stimulating.
ROLF LOEBER [continued]: And after that, each of us does something different. So it's enriching. I believe that's the scholarly venture of my life could not have taken place with all this incredible interaction with Magda and the incredible interaction with my colleagues, including you, of course. And so it's a very-- I feel very, very grateful for that, because I think on my own, I probably would not have done all of that. It's just not sustaining.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Yeah, my impression is that when you go on holiday, you do your Irish history and architecture, so that's your holiday, right?
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah, but there are also other holidays. I take holidays throughout the year. We sometimes go to Italy or sometimes to France or to Holland. So it's not that Ireland is important. It is not everything. No, I mean, frankly, the life-- I don't think I travel, perhaps, as much as you do. But I'm close to your level.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: I usually go to Europe at least seven or eight times a year. And it's fun. That also means something that is really important in my life is yes, I have citizenship from Canada and the United States. I really feel transatlantic, connecting Europe, in a way, with Northern America. And that is a privilege.
DAVID FARRINGTON: And what about the library of thousands of volumes of Irish literature that you sold to a university in the United States?
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah.
DAVID FARRINGTON: The Rolf and Magda Loeber Library of Irish Literature. ROLF LOEBER: Yeah, that has gone to the University of Notre Dame.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Notre Dame, yeah.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah. And it's hard to open up space in our—
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: --for other things.
DAVID FARRINGTON: How many volumes was it?
ROLF LOEBER: Oh, about 2,000.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Oh, 2000. I thought it was more than that.
ROLF LOEBER: No, no. No, no. But they were carefully selected.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Rare. Very rare, were they?
ROLF LOEBER: Well, yes. Some of-- unique copies, all right. You see, this was a side product of my regular work. Since I travel quite a lot, then I love to visit secondhand bookstores and antiquarian bookstores. And I would find books and Magda would read them. And so there was kind of in the production line, in some way. But you needed to find the books. And so that's very exciting. And I have very, very good memories of visiting obscure places and finding-- You see, sometimes my memory-- I have a different memory than yours. But my memory is like, for example, I would find an usual book. Later, when I pick up the book at home and I say to myself, where did I find it? And I almost immediately know which store, which shelf, what situation.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Amazing.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah, so-- I don't have a very good memory for numbers-- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: Perhaps my knowledge is less relevant.
DAVID FARRINGTON: No, different. Different.
ROLF LOEBER: Different. I think memory is a working course in science. Because if you don't have the right memory for things, you can't do it. So I do remember more than just a bookshelf, of course.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: But anyway, I think I would not have been doing my Irish work if I had not had a good salary. Well nowadays, it's actually reimbursed, but in the past, it wasn't. It's afforded me to do other things. I mean basically, salary opens up other things.
DAVID FARRINGTON: You could be like a gentleman doing the ground tour in the 1800s.
ROLF LOEBER: Yes, I think that would have been OK, attractive idea.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: Even that gentleman would have needed income from an estate—
DAVID FARRINGTON: Yes.
ROLF LOEBER: --an inheritance, or a rich wife.
DAVID FARRINGTON: A rich wife.
ROLF LOEBER: It would be wonderful to have an heiress—
DAVID FARRINGTON: [LAUGHS]
ROLF LOEBER: --that crosses your path. Doesn't apply to Magda and me.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Just one thing that I was going to follow up on, and you were talking about the difficulties of applying for grants, and the fact that often-- sometimes you're turned down. And the difficulties of submitting papers to journals and often being turned down. I think we should make it clear-- people often say to me oh, surely you don't get articles turned down. Of course I do. Everybody does.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah.
DAVID FARRINGTON: But I think one lesson for students of the future is the key to success is to keep trying. And that came through with you were saying that.
ROLF LOEBER: Yeah.
DAVID FARRINGTON: I think persistence-- would you agree that the key to success is persistence?
ROLF LOEBER: Absolutely. But there's enormous scope for discouragement. But there's sometimes you have to take your losses, as well. You try intensely for something. And then at a certain point, you should say oh well. I need to move on. And I think this is very interesting from the angle of what one should do at the later stage of one's career-- how to expand one's horizons, how to improve-- it is not only students who need to improve. I think it's scholars. Scholars are particularly important. Because they tend to do the things that they used to find useful. And trying to expand that horizon, actually, is quite a challenge. And I think for the better scholars, I think that's my goal. You need to expand your horizon and be able to also have a meaning vis a vis the grant agencies to move with what is the zeitgeist of funding. Because obviously, you can't always-- [AUDIO OUT] --get funding for exactly your own hobbyhorse. So you need to be able to be flexible. But it's an interesting interplay. It's not a straightforward pulling the bow and getting the arrow into the tiger.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [CHUCKLES] So what are you going to do in the last five years? You say you're going to retire. Surely you're not going to give up all this intellectual contribution to criminology and psychology and psychiatry?
ROLF LOEBER: Well, I probably will be involved in some way. But I have other things I need to do. [LAUGHS]
DAVID FARRINGTON: You will then become a full-time Irish historian.
ROLF LOEBER: So no, I mean the architecture book that I'm competing with a team of people is going to be done in about half a year. And then I want to do a book, and Magda will actually participate in that, and a third person, a good friend of ours, on the place of the house in the landscape. Because there are architectural studies that look at us the features of buildings, or landscape studies that deal with parks, gardens, landscape, in general. But the bringing the two together, although it seems to be simple idea, it's actually very complex and very interesting. And it would involve new data collection.
DAVID FARRINGTON: [CHUCKLES]
ROLF LOEBER: Of a different kind than in criminology.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Tramping across fields, finding out.
ROLF LOEBER: Yes, exactly. Going, looking at the ruins, looking at the changed domains, and so on. And also very interested in the role of poetry and literature, in general, and painting-- how that impacted on people's choice about what kind of landscape they want to create. We're also very interested in climate, because the way that the seasons change, and even during a day, how things look, was often part and parcel of decision making about how to create the correspondence between house and gardens and landscape. So anyway, it's a bit ambitious. But then, you know, who knows? I might complete it.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Might. So do you have any-- I think we're coming towards the end of the discussion. Do you have any things that you'd like to say that you didn't get a chance to say? Any amplifying thought?
ROLF LOEBER: Amplifying thoughts. Well, since this is being videotaped for the—
DAVID FARRINGTON: Posterity.
ROLF LOEBER: --posterity. But it's also, really--this is an initiative of the ASC. I just want to say how impressed I am by criminology as a profession in the United States. With my own background-- obviously not fully trained in criminology-- I feel exactly that this kind of illustrious organization. I feel also that it's unique. It's not like a trade organization, where you have membership that you can only pass after arduous screening and exams. It's open to different professions. And I think that is amazing. You have here an organization that actually facilitates science and application by tapping into the knowledge of a great variety of people with very different forms of training, openness of science. And I was thinking, actually, the other day about there was this movement called the new learning in the 1650s. And people of like Robert Hooke and Hartlip and Christopher Wren were members of the Royal Society. If you think about these people, they came from very different backgrounds. Some of were architects, others mathematicians. Some were, like Robert Boyle, into chemistry. And these people were actually meeting with each other, like the ASC, different people interacting and actually creating a new learning. Now that is renewing. And I feel very, very grateful to have been included in this outer-world of individuals.
DAVID FARRINGTON: Excellent. Very good. Well, thank you very much.
