Born in Quebec City, Klineberg was raised in
Montreal. He was one of eight children "brought up in a friendly and warm atmosphere and conservative
Jewish tradition". He obtained a bachelor's degree from
McGill University in 1919, a master's degree in philosophy from
Harvard University in 1920, a medical degree from McGill in 1925 and a Ph.D. in psychology from
Columbia University in 1928. He remained at Columbia as chairman of the newly created department of
social psychology. There, he was influenced by
Franz Boas, a German anthropologist who created the cultural anthropology doctoral program at Columbia. In 1929, he began research about the psychological differences between African Americans and Native Americans, which, though controversial at the time, helped to correct prior beliefs of race-based inferiority. He married Selma Gintzler in 1933, with whom he had a daughter and two sons. Klineberg was a polyglot and spoke English, German, Chinese in addition to the major Romance Languages. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Klineberg held a senior post in the
social sciences in
UNESCO. He helped found the
International Social Science Council and the International Union of Psychological Science, on which he served on the executive committee (1951–1969), as secretary-general (1955–1960) and as president (1960–1963). From 1961 to 1982 he was professor at the
University of Paris, where he directed the International Center for Intergroup Relations until 1982. In 1963 Klineberg was president of the 17th International Congress of Psychology, held in
Washington DC. He was also president of the
World Federation for Mental Health, the Inter-America Society of Psychology, the Eastern Psychological Association of the United States and the
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. On his retirement to
Manhattan in 1982, he taught part-time at the
City University of New York until 1990. He died following a brief period of
Parkinson's disease. ==Awards and honors==