Norman Birnbaum

---

title: "Norman Birnbaum" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["20th-century-american-sociologists", "21st-century-american-sociologists", "20th-century-american-non-fiction-writers", "21st-century-american-non-fiction-writers", "21st-century-american-memoirists", "jewish-american-sociologists", "jewish-american-non-fiction-writers", "jewish-american-memoirists", "american-memoirists", "jewish-american-socialists", "american-socialists", "georgetown-university-law-center-faculty", "fellows-of-nuffield-college,-oxford", "commanders-crosses-of-the-order-of-merit-of-the-federal-republic-of-germany", "williams-college-alumni", "harvard-graduate-school-of-arts-and-sciences-alumni", "20th-century-american-jews", "21st-century-american-jews", "1926-births", "2019-deaths"] description: "American sociologist (1926–2019)" topic_path: "law" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Birnbaum" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American sociologist (1926–2019) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox academic"]

Field	Value
name	Norman Birnbaum
image	Norman Birnbaum official portrait.jpg
caption	Official portrait from the Georgetown University Law Center
birth_date
birth_place	New York City, U.S.
death_date
death_place	Washington, D.C., U.S.
alma_mater	Williams College
Harvard University (PhD)
workplaces	Nuffield College, Oxford
thesis_title	Social Structure and the German Reformation
thesis_year	1958
doctoral_advisor	Talcott Parsons
notable_students	Steven Lukes
::

| name = Norman Birnbaum | image = Norman Birnbaum official portrait.jpg | caption = Official portrait from the Georgetown University Law Center | birth_date = | birth_place = New York City, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = Washington, D.C., U.S. | alma_mater = Williams College Harvard University (PhD) | workplaces = Nuffield College, Oxford | thesis_title = Social Structure and the German Reformation | thesis_year = 1958 | doctoral_advisor = Talcott Parsons | doctoral_students = | notable_students = Steven Lukes

Norman Birnbaum (July 21, 1926 – January 4, 2019) was an American sociologist. He was an emeritus professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and a member of the editorial board of The Nation. In 2017 he received Germany's highest award, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit.

Early life

He was educated in New York City's public schools, at Williams College, and earned a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1958, supervised by Talcott Parsons. He taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Oxford University, the University of Strasbourg, Amherst College, served on the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research and was Distinguished Fulbright Professor at the University of Bologna.

Birnbaum's pedagogical work included the introduction of sociology to the undergraduate curricula at Amherst and Oxford. A founding member of the editorial board of New Left Review, was active in politics on both sides of the Atlantic He had been an advisor to American trade unions and members of Congress, as well as to a number of social movements and political parties in Europe. He contributed regularly to a number of publications, including openDemocracy, El País in Spain, and the German daily Die Tageszeitung. He published his memoir, From the Bronx to Oxford and Not Quite Back, in 2018.

Bibliography

Books

• The Crisis of Industrialized Society, 1969.
• (with Gertrud Lenzer), Sociology and Religion, 1969.
• Toward a Critical Sociology, 1971.
• (edited) Beyond the Crisis, 1976.
• Social Structure and The German Reformation, 1980.
• The Radical Renewal: The Politics of Ideas in Modern America, 1988.
• Searching for the Light: Essays on Thought and Culture, 1993.
• After Progress: American Social Reform and European Socialism in the Twentieth Century, 2001.
• Norman Birnbaum: From the Bronx to Oxford and Not Quite Back (memoir), 2019

Selected op-eds

• "Absent from the persecutory chorus," Financial Times, September 15, 1998.
• "Rather More Critical View of Kenneth Starr," Financial Times, April 7, 1998.
• "Why Not a Muslim on Anti-Terrorism Commission?" in national newspaper syndication, July 14, 1999.
• "Terrorism Panel No Place for Anti-Arab Bias," in national newspaper syndication, July 18, 1999.
• "Jewish Minority Doesn't Speak for All," in national newspaper syndication, July 18, 1999.
• "Critics Assured Place in History," The Financial Times, October 5, 1999.
• "Adviser's post carries not a lot of power," The Financial Times, March 4, 2000.
• "Dynasties in competition," The Financial Times, January 24, 2001.
• "Americans able to think for themselves," The Financial Times, October 16, 2001.
• "US spin doctor," The Independent, March 21, 2002.
• "What class consciousness means in US," The Financial Times, June 5, 2002.

References

References

1. "Norman Birnbaum, left-wing sociologist and journalist with the Nation, dies at 92". The Washington Post.
2. IAS News. (November 20, 2017). "Former Member Receives Grand Cross of the Order of Merit".
3. "Social structure and the German reformation". [[Harvard Library]].
4. Birnbaum, Norman. (1980). "Social Structure and the German Reformation". [[Arno Press]].
5. Bowen, Roger. (January 22, 2019). "An Interview with Norman Birnbaum".
6. Galbraith, James K.. (February 9, 2018). "The Anxious Pilgrim".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::