April 2, 2001

Sociologist of religion and morality Robert Bellah from the University of California at Berkeley spoke in the Villard Room on “Habits of the Heart Revisited.” The author of Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985), Professor Bellah reexamined the original tracing of these two elements in American democracy from their discovery by Alexis de Tocqueville in revisions of his work in 1996—when he drew attention to decline of “social capital” and the persistence and growth of “neocapitalism”—and again in 2008—expressing grave concern about the mounting economic and social inequalities in American society.