Robert Nisbet; Sociologist, Leading Conservative Thinker

Robert A. Nisbet, sociologist, educator and author who was a leader of conservative thought, has died at the age of 82.

Nisbet, a native of Los Angeles, died Monday of prostate cancer at his home in Washington.

The son of a lumberyard worker, Nisbet credited his development as a thinker and scholar to growing up in the dreary San Joaquin Valley town of Maricopa..

“Its ugliness and hostile challenge to the human spirit,” he later said, “drove me straight to books.”

Nisbet worked his way through three degrees at UC Berkeley and, after serving in the Army during World War II, began his teaching career at Berkeley. In 1953, he moved to UC Riverside, where he was a dean until 1972. He also taught for two years at the University of Arizona.

He held the Albert Schweitzer chair of the humanities at Columbia University from 1974 until 1982, when he retired from teaching and became resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Throughout his classroom career, Nisbet also delved into the history of ideas and transformed his careful thinking into a spate of books. He set high values on family, community, loyalty and freedom. He disparaged liberalism, judicial activism, popular opinion and permissiveness.

Nisbet never rooted himself so firmly in the political right, however, that he would not eagerly and fairly debate any premise with liberals.

“Always, author Nisbet comes to his point, historically, politically, engagingly,” the late Times book editor Art Seidenbaum noted in reviewing Nisbet’s 1982 book, “Prejudices--A Philosophical Dictionary.” Fellow scholarly conservative William F. Buckley Jr. called the dictionary simply “a bloody wonderful book.”

Nisbet reveled in complexity of thought, prompting Seidenbaum to accuse him of “ivory ivy towering bias.” Another Times reviewer evaluating Nisbet’s 1988 book “The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America” began: “This book isn’t always easy to follow.”

The sociologist’s first book was “The Quest for Community” in 1953, followed three years later by “Human Relations in Administration.” Other titles reflecting his diverse intellectual exploration include “Social Change and History,” “Twilight of Authority,” “Sociology as an Art Form,” “History of the Idea of Progress,” and “Conservatism: Dream vs. Reality.”

Nisbet was also a prolific contributor to other sociology books and to professional and general interest journals.

He is survived by his wife, Caroline; two daughters from a previous marriage, Martha Rehrman and Constance Field, and a stepdaughter, Annie Nash.