Nivison entered Harvard University in 1940, but, like many American men of his generation, his studies were interrupted by World War II. Nivison served in the United States Army Signal Corps as a Japanese translator, where he worked in a group organized by Edwin O. Reischauer. He returned to Harvard after the war's conclusion in 1945, and graduated in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude in Chinese. Nivison stayed at Harvard for graduate studies in Chinese, receiving his Ph.D. in 1953 with a dissertation on 18th-century Chinese philosopher Zhang Xuecheng. He worked with J.R. Hightower, Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, and his first Chinese teachers were Yang Lien-sheng and William Hung, who passed on their deep knowledge of traditional Chinese scholarship and interest in recent Western historiography.
