The Two Cousins. Episode 8: Many Roberts bob about.

The Two Cousins

Episode 8: Many Roberts bob about.

Iain Smith

 

We last left Robert MacIver (in Episode 6) ten years into a USA career that was to last for most of four decades.

A measure of MacIver’s standing by 1936 was his receiving an honorary degree from the University of Harvard. He was included in a “roster of scholars, drawn from countries across the world, who were recipients of this recognition during the tercentenary of Harvard.” He refers in passing already to having an honorary degree –from Columbia. The universities of Harvard and of Columbia were then, and remain today by most calculations, in the top ten universities in the world.

Through these years there were ongoing tensions between Robert MacIver and an academic he himself had head-hunted, one Robert Lynd. Lynd had been recruited largely on the basis of a (still well-regarded) book “Middletown”, a study of a small USA town. Given that their central interests revolved around the concept of “community” (rather than “state”), one might expected the two Roberts to get on well with each other. But this proved not be the case. Robert Lynd tended to side with the young academics in Columbia who favoured a more statistically based methodology within the sociology department.

A vacancy occurred in the department in 1941. MacIver favoured appointing Robert K Merton whom he regarded as “the most promising of the younger sociologists”; Lynd favoured Paul Lazarsfeld, a more statistically-oriented scholar. In a classic academic compromise, both were appointed. Ironically, Robert K Merton (who died only recently) and Paul Lazarsfeld are today better remembered in the world-wide academic community of social scientists than either Maciver or Lynd.  By 1950, both Merton and Lazarsfeld were indeed world-class stars; but Robert MacIver regretted that it was the philosophy of the latter that dominated and shaped the Columbia sociology department.  He had a benign view of humanity in general; but was less forgiving of individual sociologists with whom he disagreed – a failing that is still general among many academic  communities.

Robert Maciver had passed the peak of his intellectual eminence as a sociologist. The world of sociology, especially in the USA had become - and remains to this day - one that is largely dominated by approaches towards which Robert MacIver was not well disposed.

Aged 68 in 1950, MacIver approached the age of compulsory retirement. This was not a prospect he relished. On retirement, he made a sideways shift from full-time sociologist into a part-time post in political theory and governance.

He writes amusingly about receiving an honorary degree from his alma mater, the University of Edinburgh (in 1952):-

“At Edinburgh one was expected to show up for the occasion in the cutaway coat and striped trousers of ‘morning dress’ and don before the ceremony the magnificent scarlet rob of the doctorate. The conferment itself was conducted in an atmosphere of sonorous solemnity and followed by a stately service in St Giles Cathedral. In the evening one sat on a dais at a full-dress banquet surrounded by university leaders and city dignitaries in official regalia. There was a series of toasts beginning with queen and country proposed in short style and witty speeches as the wine went round”

 

But he clearly enjoyed it: “Without being a devotee of ceremony, I felt it accented the significance of the occasion and made me sense more fully the honour that was being bestowed on me by a great historical institution.”

The same university in 2008 bestowed an honorary degree on Robert MacIver’s fellow-islander: Matthew Maciver, a distinguished son of Lewis of a later generation. Bill Lawson tells us that the two are related.  In 1952, when Robert collected his degree, the incoming Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh was HRH Prince Philip. In 2008, when Matthew collected his degree, Prince Philip still held the same office. Robert and Matthew seem to be the only two MacIvers (or Macivers) - and the only two Lewismen - ever to have been awarded an honorary degree by the University of Edinburgh. History does not record whether in 2008 Matthew wore “the cutaway coat and striped trousers of morning dress”, dress slightly unfamiliar to most sons of Portnaguran. 

 

The University of Aberdeen recently celebrated the centenary of its appointment of Robert MacIver. A current professor of sociology there has written :-

“MacIver was President of the American Sociological Association in 1940…….. , received numerous prizes for his publications and was awarded eight honorary degrees. He was the author of nearly twenty books. For a time these works became some of the standard texts in sociology.

“MacIver’s sociological work shows a fascination with the relationship between individuals and society, between individual autonomy and tight-knit communities, or put another way, the compatibility of individualism and strong social organization.

“It may well be that MacIver’s sociological writings are shaped by Stornoway as mediated through urban Toronto and up-town New York, in that his personal acquaintance with close knit communal life in the Western Isles and the individualized living of an urban metropolis may have given him particular insights into the relationship between individuals and society.

“……his Scottish upbringing had an enduring impact on his conception of sociology, despite having spent all but four years as a sociologist living and working outside Scotland.”

Let us for the moment give a last word to the American Sociological Association:-

“MacIver also had a continuing and judicious interest in many public issues. In The More Perfect Union (1949) he warned about the vicious circle of discrimination, deprivation, and accentuated racial prejudice. In Academic Freedom in Our Time (1955) he exposed contemporary assaults on academic freedom and convincingly demonstrated the importance of such freedom for a viable society. He directed a thorough investigation of delinquency programs in New York City which was summarized in one of his last books, The Prevention and Control of Delinquency (1966).”

By the very late 1960s, Professor MacIver was ailing. Ironically he (since his teenage years a lifelong agnostic, although not an atheist) went into New York Presbyterian Hospital - probably because it was the hospital of the University of Columbia. He had travelled a long way in his extended life.

There the 88-yr-old Robert MacIver died on June 15, 1970.

(to be concluded)

 

Iain Smith is a part-time writer who was formerly Dean of Education in the University of Strathclyde.