After graduation from Harvard, Smith was a professor and department chair at
Vassar College. He then worked for the
Social Science Research Council for several years. Between 1956 and 1959, he taught at
New York University and headed the psychology graduate program. He moved to the
University of California, Berkeley. In 1961, he interviewed and helped to select the first group of
Peace Corps volunteers; he traveled to Ghana to visit them multiple times. Smith directed Berkeley's Institute of Human Development from 1965 to 1968. After serving as department head at the
University of Chicago for two years, he came to the
University of California, Santa Cruz in 1970. He was dean of social sciences for five years, then was a professor of psychology until his retirement in 1988. At UC Santa Cruz, he influenced a focus on social justice in the social psychology program.
Brown v. Board of Education In 1954, Smith provided expert testimony in
Brown v. Board of Education which characterized segregation as "inherently an insult to the integrity of the individual". Jackson argues that segregationist writers of the time "succeeded in framing the issues in a manner that put the actions of the social scientists in the worst possible light."
Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health Smith was the vice president of the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health, an independent organization created by the
United States Congress in 1955 to study the care of the nation's mentally ill. The group's final report is thought to have influenced legislation that led to the
deinstitutionalization of the American mentally ill. The report,
Action for Mental Health (1961), advocated for community-based mental health care. It recommended that no mental hospitals should be constructed with more than 1,000 beds and that existing hospitals of greater than 1,000 beds should be converted to centers treating chronic physical and mental conditions. By the 1980s, the group's report was criticized for leading to deinstitutionalization in large numbers without establishing sufficient community resources for the mentally ill and for the subsequent overreliance on psychiatric drugs. Charles Schlaifer, a member of the group, said that he later became frustrated because "tranquilizers became the panacea for the mentally ill... Local mental health centers were going to be the greatest thing going, but no one wanted to think it through." Smith admitted that "extravagant claims were made for the benefits of shifting from state hospitals to community clinics. The professional community made mistakes and was overly optimistic, but the political community wanted to save money." ==Later life==