Life and Work
Robbins obtained a B.A. in government from Harvard University in 1965, and a Ph.D. in Sociology, at the University of North Carolina in 1973. He subsequently held teaching or research positions at Queens College (CUNY), the New School for Social Research, Yale University and the Graduate Theological Union. He has authored numerous articles and reviews for sociological and religious journals.
Among Robbins' early work are notable studies comparing contemporary and historical controversies, such as the mass suicides among the Russian Old Believers and those that occurred in Jonestown in 1979, or present-day agitation against "cults" and similar controversies surrounding Catholicism, Mormonism and Freemasonry in the early nineteenth century. From the mid-1980s, Robbins became increasingly focused on legal and church-state issues related to new religious movements. He has written extensively on the legal and social-science issues related to the alleged use of mind control by therapeutic and religious groups. Together with his colleague, the psychologist Dick Anthony, Robbins has been one of the most prominent critics of the anti-cult movement's views on brainwashing.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Robbins (sociologist)
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