The Sociologist as Intellectual

• Published in: City & community Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 433 - 438
• Main Author: Kasinitz, Philip
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Sage Publications Ltd 01.06.2019
• Subjects: Accidents; Expenditures; Foreign policy; Glazer, Nathan (1923-2019); Graduate students; Immigration; Immigration policy; Loneliness; Protest movements; Sociological research; Sociology
• ISSN: 1535-6841; 1540-6040
• DOI: 10.1111/cico.12401

Nathan Glazer, who died on January 19, 2019, at the age of 95, was for several decades arguably the most influential American Sociologist outside of academic sociology. This is striking because, despite appointments at Berkeley and Harvard, he was somewhat marginal within academic sociology. He was co‐author of two of the bestselling works is the history of American Sociology, The Lonely Crowd with David Riesman and Reuel Denny in 1950 and Beyond the Melting Pot with Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1963, and for decades thereafter he was a highly visible contributor to public debates on a host of issues including race, immigration, American cities, public education, political protest, U.S. foreign policy, American culture, and even architecture. Yet, he never had many graduate students. He rarely wrote for sociology journals and he never seemed much concerned with having himself enshrined in the academic canon. Despite spending most of his life in the academy he always seemed to be an almost accidental professor.