Steven B. Smith is Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He has served as the Master of Branford College at Yale and is the Co-Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions. His book Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (1997) won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize from Phi Beta Kappa. His most recent book, Modernity and its Discontents (2016), has been widely reviewed and the subject of book conference and panel discussions. He is currently working on a new book called In Defense of Patriotism.