Robert Morrison MacIver (April 17, 1882 – June 15, 1970) was a U.S. (Scottish-born) sociologist.
MacIver was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland (17 April 1882) to Donald MacIver, a general merchant and tweed manufacturer, and Christina MacIver (née Morrison). On 14 August 1911 he was married to Elizabeth Marion Peterkin. (Three children: Ian Tennnt,Morrison, Christina Elizabeth, and Donald Gordon.)
He received degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh (M.A. 1903; D.Ph. 1915), Oxford (B.A. 1907), Columbia (Litt.E. 1929 and Harvard (1936). In his rather long period of formal education MacIver had never made any academically supervised study of sociology. His work in that field was distinguished by his acumen, his philosophical understanding, and extensive study of the major pioneering works of Durkheim, Toennies, Max and Alfred Weber, Simmel and others in the British Museum Library, London, while resident as a student in Oxford.
He was a University Lecturer in political science (1907) and sociology (1911) at the University of Aberdeen. MacIver left Aberdeen in 1915 for a post at the University of Toronto where he was professor of political science and later head of department (1922–27). In 1927 he accepted an invitation from Barnard College of Columbia University in New York where he became professor of social science(1927–36). He was subsequently named Lieber Professor of political science and sociology at Columbia University and taught there from 1929 to 1950. He was President, beginning in 1963, and then Chancellor of The New School for Social Research (1965-66).[1]
MacIver was Vice-Chairman of the Canada War Labor Board (1917–18). He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the American Philosophical Society. He was a member of the American Sociological Society, and was elected the 30th president of the American Sociological Association in 1940.[2] He was a member of the Institut Internationale de Sociologie and of Phi Beta Kappa.
Entry in: A Dictionary of Sociology, George Marshall (Ed.), 1998, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-280081-7 Curriculum vitae provided by MacIver to the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches in 1950, in box 428.11.01.1 of the archives of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland (http://library.oikoumene.org/en/home.html)