Commentary

Merit Before Meritocracy

– Peter Skerry, "Nathan Glazer: Merit Before Meritocracy," The American Interest, April 3, 2019.
In The American Interest, Peter Skerry writes about Nathan Glazer, his milieu, and the transformation of American intellectual life. Excerpt: The death of Nathan Glazer in January, a month before his 96th birthday, has been rightly noted as the end of an era… More

The Immortal Mind of Nathan Glazer

– Martin Peretz, "The Immortal Mind of Nathan Glazer," Tablet, January 23, 2019.
Martin Peretz discusses the life and ideas of Nathan Glazer: Excerpt: Nathan Glazer died this past Saturday at 95: one of the last surviving members of New York intellectuals who graduated from the tenements to the revolutionary excitement of City College and… More

Nathan Glazer (1923-2019)

– Adam Wolfson, The American Interest, January 21, 2019.
Excerpt: The intellectual world will be a much poorer place with the death of Nathan Glazer. I had the good fortune to get to know Nat (as he was known) when I began working on the editorial staff of The Public Interest in its last decade of publication.… More

Nathan Glazer, Urban Sociologist and Outspoken Intellectual, Dies at 95

– Barry Gewen, New York Times, January 19, 2019.
Excerpt: Nathan Glazer, one of the country’s foremost urban sociologists, who became most closely identified with the circle of disillusioned liberals known as the neoconservatives, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 95. His daughter,… More

Eight Decades of Ethnic Dilemmas

– Jason Willick, Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2018.
Excerpt: Ethnic politics has existed throughout American history, as the country absorbed successive waves of immigrants. But Mr. Glazer sees contemporary identity politics as something new—an offspring of the civil-rights movement. “What happened was… More

A Party of One

– Daniel DiSalvo, "A Party of One," Commentary, January 17, 2017.
Daniel DiSalvo reviews a new collection of essays by Nathan Glazer: The son of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Poland, Glazer grew up in East Harlem. He attended the City College of New York and then split his professional life between magazines and… More

Nathan Glazer: An Appreciation by Peter Skerry

– Peter Skerry, National Affairs (Spring 2016).
Excerpt: If Nathan Glazer seems destined to stand apart from the tribe into which he was born, he has also been an interloper in the tribes among which he has lived and worked — tribes that don’t even realize that they are tribes. Indeed, it is… More

Nathan Glazer’s Warning by Howard Husock

– Husock, Howard. "Nathan Glazer's Warning." City Journal, Summer 2011.
President Obama’s revival of an ambitious social policy agenda makes this a good time to reexamine the work of one of the most brilliant critics of the first wave: Nathan Glazer, now 88, a Harvard sociologist and one of the last of the founding generation… More

Nathan Glazer and Multiculturalism by James Traub

– Traub, James. "I Was Wrong: Nathan Glazer comes to terms with multiculturalism." Slate, May 17, 1997.
Nathan Glazer, the Harvard social scientist and core member of the group known as the New York Intellectuals, appears to be haunted by second thoughts. This may be a sign of irresolution. In a review of Glazer’s latest book, We Are All… More

Ethnic Dilemmas: 1964-1982, reviewed by Charles Krauthammer

– Krauthammer, Charles.  "Ethnic Dilemmas 1964-1982, by Nathan Glazer Reviewed." Commentary, October 1984.
Excerpt: It is hard to imagine that a book of three hundred pages on affirmative action and associated subjects, pages written over eighteen years of fierce and emotional debate on the issue, could be a model of clarity and measured reasoning…

Affirmative Discrimination Reviewed by William Petersen

– Petersen, William. "Affirmative Discrimination, by Nathan Glazer Reviewed." Commentary, May, 1976.
This important book is one of the first full-length accounts of the reverse discrimination known as “affirmative action,” and of how that policy has operated in the fields of employment.