Nathan Glazer

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Nathan Glazer (born February 25, 1923 in New York - † January 19, 2019 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an American sociologist , neoconservative and co-editor of The Public Interest magazine and a freelance writer for The New Republic .

Life

Nathan Glazer was born in New York in 1923, the seventh and youngest child of Louis (a tailor) and Tillie (née Zacharevich) Glazer. He grew up in a Jewish Orthodox and socialist environment. On September 26, 1943, he married Ruth Slotkin , with whom he had three daughters (Sarah, Sophie and Elizabeth) before divorcing her again in 1958. He married his second wife, Sulochana Raghavan (a researcher), on October 5, 1963.

From 1940 he studied at the City College of New York , which was attended by many Jewish New York intellectuals , with a focus on history. During this time he joined the Zionist student organization and soon became the editor of their national magazine, Avukah Student Action . This activity influenced him very strongly and brought him closer to the intellectual left, whereupon, after specializing in economics and public administration, he shifted his major to sociology and graduated there in January 1944. As early as 1942 he began studying at the University of Pennsylvania , which he graduated with a master's in spring 1944 . Fearing that he would not be offered any more positions, he turned down a scholarship in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. For the next 20 years he only worked occasionally on his PhD in philosophy and often looked for smaller jobs as a newspaper author, which made him a well-known intellectual by the time he graduated in 1962 .

After declining the scholarship, he returned to New York to work for Contemporary magazine , published by the American Jewish Committee . He stayed there until 1953 and then became an editorial advisor at the American publisher Anchor Books . When he left this in 1957, he then worked in many different positions (sociology teacher, author or editorial advisor at Random House Publishing ). His teaching activities ranged from the University of California-Berkeley (1957–58), Bennington College ( Bennington , Vermont ; 1958–1959) to Smith College ( Northampton , Massachusetts ; 1959–1960). After one year Japan had traveled, he got a job Department of Housing and Urban Development in (the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development ) as an expert on urban sociology . In 1969 he took up a professorship in education and social structure at Harvard University .

plant

Glazer's first two books (together with David Riesman ) The Lonely Crowd (1950) and Faces in the Crowd (1952) are classics of the theory school of collective behavior . Glazer later became known for his studies in ethnic relations and urban exploration. In the book Beyond the Melting Pot (1963), which he wrote with Daniel P. Moynihan , he criticized the concept of America as a cultural melting pot , since the different ethnic groups mostly retained their identities and were not completely absorbed in American culture. Despite this finding, however, he maintained that assimilation should remain the ultimate goal of American culture.

There is also a documentary with Nathan Glazer. It shows Irving Howe , Daniel Bell , Nathan Glazer and Irving Kristol from their beginnings together in the City College cafeteria to their roles as left-wing activists and their current positions.

Honors

In 1969, Glazer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

  • The Lonely Crowd (with David Riesman ). New Haven 1950
  • Faces in The Crowd (with David Riesman). New Haven 1952
  • American Judaism . Chicago 1957
  • The Social Basis of American Communism . 1961
  • Beyond The Melting Pot (with Daniel P. Moynihan ). Cambridge 1963
  • Cities in Trouble . Chicago 1970
  • Afirmative discrimination . Cambridge 1976
  • The Limits of Social Policy . Cambridge 1989
  • From a cause to a style . Princeton 2007

literature

  • Joseph Dorman (Ed.), Leslie Lenkowsky (Ed.): When Ideas Mattered: A Nathan Glazer Reader . Transaction Publishers, 2016, ISBN 9781412863797

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 18, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Glazer, Nathan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , USA
DATE OF DEATH 19th January 2019
Place of death Cambridge , Massachusetts