Robert Nisbet

Nisbet saw in thinkers like Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville—then all but unknown in American scholarship—an argument on behalf of what he called 'conservative pluralism.

[1] After serving in the United States Army during World War II, when he was stationed on Saipan in the Pacific Theatre, Nisbet founded the Department of Sociology at Berkeley, and was briefly chairman.

[6] While he consistently described himself as a conservative, he also "famously defended abortion rights and publicly attacked the foreign policy of President Ronald Reagan.

[8] He challenged conventional sociological theories about progress and modernity, insisting on the negative consequences of the loss of traditional forms of community, a process that he believed was greatly accelerated by World War I.

According to British sociologist Daniel Chernilo, for Nisbet, "The sociological interest in the formation of modern society lies in whether and how it can re-invigorate forms of communal life and, if not, in understanding what will be the consequences of such failure."