Ian Reifowitz

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 University of the State University of New York, where he now holds the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor. In 2014 he received a S.U.N.Y. Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activities.

Ian is the author of four books: Riling Up the Base: Examining Trump’s Use of Stereotypes through an Interdisciplinary Lens—co-authored with Anastacia Kurylo (De Gruyter Brill, 2025), The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Ig Publishing, 2019), Obama's America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books, 2012), and Imagining an Austrian Nation: Joseph Samuel Bloch and the Search for a Multiethnic Austrian Identity, 1846–1919 (East European Monographs; distributed by Columbia University Press, 2003).

Ian was a Contributing Writer at the political website Daily Kos for a dozen years, and is now a Contributing Author at the Progressive Policy Institute. His articles have appeared in the Daily News, Newsday, The New Republic, and In These Times, among other mainstream outlets. He has also published numerous academic articles.