Nathan Glazer was one of the most influential sociologists of the second half of the twentieth century. His interests ranged from ethnicity and the sociology of American Jews and social policy to urbanism and architecture.

Glazer taught at the University of California Berkeley and Harvard University. During the presidency of John F. Kennedy, he worked in the Housing and Home Finance Agency and was an advocate for historical preservation of buildings, such as the original Penn Station in New York City. His books include Beyond the Melting Pot, American Judaism, The Limits of Social Policy, and The Lonely Crowd (with David Riesman). Glazer was the former co-editor of the now-defunct journal the Public Interest, a neoconservative public-policy journal on political economy and culture, and was a longtime contributing editor to the New Republic.