[3] Schwartz worked as a senior policy consultant and held the role of director of "Islam and Democracy Project" at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative think-tank based in Washington, D.C.[4] Schwartz is also the founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Islamic Pluralism[1] and served as a member of Folks Magazine's Editorial Board from 2011 to 2012.

Alongside fellow neoconservative writer Daniel Pipes, Schwartz has been a major critic of Islamism and has depicted Islamists as the new ideological nemesis of the West after the fall of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union.

[7][8] Strongly critical of the AKP government in Turkey, Schwartz has described it as a hostile pan-Islamist threat following the Gaza flotilla raid incident in 2010.

[9][10] Schwartz has also condemned the Iranian government, asserting that American academia is being threatened by the infiltration of pro-Khomeinist state agents of Iran.

[14] The family moved to San Francisco in 1951, where Horace became a literary agent and Schwartz's brother, Geoffrey, was born.

[17] The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote of Schwartz in 1989: "As he himself readily admits, Schwartz has made a lot of enemies over the years as he performed a series of dizzying ideological leaps: from the Industrial Workers of the World to meeting with Oliver North and the Outreach Group on Central America in the basement of the White House, from minuscule Trotskyist sects meeting in North Beach cafes to serving as a U.S. press representative for a Contra leader.