Raised in Smithtown, Long Island, Ian Reifowitz graduated from Brown University with a BA in history and from Georgetown University with a PhD in history. Since 2002, he has taught history at Empire State College of the State University of New Yrk, where he now holds the rank of professor, and in 2009 won the college's Susan H. Turben Award for Scholarly Excellence. In 2014 he received a S.U.N.Y. Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activities. He is a Contributing Editor at the political website Daily Kos, and his opinion pieces and articles on American politics have appeared in the Daily News, Newsday, The New Republic, In These Times, and other publications. His first book, Imagining an Austrian Nation: Joseph Samuel Bloch and the Search for a Multiethnic Austrian Identity, 1846-1919, was published by East European Monographs and distributed by Columbia University Press in 2003. He has published a number of academic articles in the Journal of Jewish Identities, Nationalities Papers, and East European Quarterly, amongst other publications, as well as numerous book reviews.