Robert Nisbet was born in Los Angeles in 1913. He obtained a Ph.D.
in sociology in 1939 from Berkeley, where he studied under Frederick
J. Teggart. In 1943 Nisbet enlisted as a US Army soldier and was
sent to Europe. After the War, Nisbet worked to found the Department
of Sociology at Berkeley, for which he briefly was Chairman. Nisbet
left an embroiled Berkeley in 1953 to become a dean at UC Riverside,
and later a Vice-Chancellor. Nisbet would stay with the University
of California until 1972, when he left for the University of Arizona
at Tucson. Unhappy there, Nisbet received a prestigious appointment
to fill the Albert Schweitzer Chair at Columbia.
Having
obtained emeritus status at Columbia in 1978 Nisbet moved to Washington
D.C. to do scholarly work for the American Enterprise Institute.
Eight years later, at the age of 73, Nisbet retired from the Institute,
and two years later was asked by President Reagan to deliver the
Jefferson Lecture in Humanities bestowed by the National Endowment
for the Humanities.
Nisbet
died of complications from prostate cancer, in Washington D.C.
on September 9, 1996.
Quotations
"Disloyalty,
however picayune, is unforgivable to the fanatic. Even the appearance
of disloyalty is sufficient for banishment of the offender, no
matter how many years of unquestioned devotion have been given;
they are as nothing compared to the enormity of the moment."
"No
dogma or superstition in any religion yet uncovered by anthropologists
is more tyrannical, and more intellectually absurd, than that
of the historically inevitable or necessary."
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