Nathan Glazer - Later Career

Later Career

Glazer continued to publish books on race and ethnicity throughout the 1980s and 1990s. We Are All Multiculturalists Now, published in 1997, perhaps created the biggest stir. In it Glazer argued that multiculturalism was now the dominant ethic in public schools, while "assimilation" had become a dirty word. For Glazer it was a simple reality which could not be denied, but he remained deeply ambivalent about multiculturalism, arguing that it "is not a phase we can embrace wholeheartedly, and I hope my own sense of regret that we have come to this will not escape the reader."

Writing in what one commentator deemed a "rueful" tone, he suggested his earlier arguments regarding issues like affirmative action and the future prospects for African Americans were essentially wrong—the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 had not allowed blacks to fully integrate into American society, their situation was worse now than it had been 20 years before, and a multicultural curriculum in schools was essentially the result.

The book was heavily criticized by conservatives, with Dinesh D'Souza accusing Glazer of "cowardice" in a review in The Weekly Standard, while a critique in National Review suggested Glazer was wrongly advocating for "resignation and accommodation" to multiculturalism rather than the "forthright opposition in defense of our constitutional republic and its liberal-democratic virtues" that was needed. James Traub, on the other hand, argued that "Glazer is still the neoconservative who wrote The Limits of Social Policy," but that his "own logic leaves him with nothing to offer—except the admittedly specious comforts of multiculturalism."

As the term "neoconservative" became common parlance during the administration of president George W. Bush, Glazer pointed out that it had been "hijacked" and now meant something quite different than it once had. According to Glazer, "in its early application, in the 1970s, it referred to the growing caution and skepticism among a group of liberals about the effects of social programs. It was later applied to a vigorous and expansionist democracy-promoting military and foreign policy, especially in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union." In a 2003 letter to The New York Times Glazer argued that "there is very little connection between those called "neoconservatives" 30 years ago and neoconservatives today, who are defined entirely by their hard stance on foreign and military policy."

Glazer's most recent book is the 2007 publication From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture’s Encounter With the American City, an essay collection "that traces the diminishment of Modernist architecture from a social revolution — which asserted that traditional architecture 'had come to an end' — down to a mere style, and one almost universally resented outside the profession."