Benjamin Soskis is a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Nonprofits, Philanthropy and Policy at George Mason University. He has also served on the faculty of GW University as an adjunct professor of History. In 2010, he received his PhD from Columbia University in American history. His dissertation, "The Problem of Charity in Industrial America, 1983-1915," received the Bancroft Prize, awarded to the top dissertation in American history. He is currently completing a history of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," to be published next year by Oxford University Press. A former assistant editor for the New Republic, his writing has appeared in that publication, as well as in the New York Times, Slate, the Washington Monthly, Legal Affairs, the Forward, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.