Alan Mittleman is Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The author of, among other books, Hope in a Democratic Age (2009) and A Short History of Jewish Ethics (2011), he is currently at work on a volume about Jewish views of human nature for the Library of Jewish Ideas, a series sponsored by Tikvah in partnership with Princeton University Press. From 2000 to 2004, he served as director of Jews and the American Public Square, a research project that produced two national surveys of Jewish opinion, four volumes of scholarly essays, and fifteen conferences around the U.S.