Steven Smith

Steven Smith's picture
Alfred Cowles Prof of Government and Philosophy
Address: 
Jonathan Edwards College L11
432-5263

Steven B. Smith is the Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science.  After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he taught briefly at the University of Texas at Austin before coming to Yale in 1984. He has served as Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science, Director of the Special Program in the Humanities, Acting Chair of Judaic Studies, and Master of Branford College from 1996-2011.  Among his many publications are Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism (1989), Spinoza, Liberalism, and Jewish Identity (1997), Spinoza’s Book of Life (2003), Reading Leo Strauss (2006), and most recently Modernity and its Discontents:  Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow (2016).  He has received several academic prizes and awards including the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award given by Phi Beta Kappa, but is most proud of receiving the Les Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences.  He is also a die-hard Yankees fan.

Campus address: 115 Prospect St., Rosenkranz Hall, Room 315
Phone: (203) 432-0524, (203) 432-5263
Email: steven.smith@yale.edu