Rate My Professor Rogers Smith

Rogers M. Smith is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he joined in 2001 after 21 years at Yale University, advancing from assistant professor to Alfred Cowles Professor of Government. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University in 1980 and 1978, respectively, and his B.A. with high honors in Political Science from James Madison College at Michigan State University in 1974. Throughout his career, Smith has held prominent leadership positions, including Chair of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Political Science from 2003 to 2006, founding Director of the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism (later the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy) from 2006 to 2017, Associate Dean for the Social Sciences from 2014 to 2018, and President of the American Political Science Association from 2018 to 2019. He also co-founded the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia and has secondary appointments in Africana Studies, the Graduate School of Education, and the School of Law's Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law.

Smith's research centers on constitutional law, American political thought, and modern legal and political theory, with special interests in citizenship, race, ethnicity, gender inequalities, immigration, and civil rights. He is the author or co-author of nine books and numerous articles, including Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (Yale University Press, 1997), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History; Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Memberships (Cambridge University Press, 2003); The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (with Philip A. Klinkner, University of Chicago Press, 1999); Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama’s America (with Desmond S. King, Princeton University Press, 2011); Political Peoplehood: The Roles of Values, Interests, and Identities (University of Chicago Press, 2015); That Is Not Who We Are! Populism and Peoplehood (Yale University Press, 2020); and America's New Racial Battle Lines: Protect Versus Repair (with Desmond S. King, University of Chicago Press, 2024). His contributions have been recognized with the American Political Science Association's Frank J. Goodnow Award, election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004, Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2011, Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2016, and multiple teaching awards from Yale and Penn. Smith's work has profoundly influenced scholarship on American identity, democratic theory, and racial politics.