Upon graduating from the University of London in 1991 with a degree in Theology, Smith attended the Oxford Centre for Hebrew Studies in 1992, and received his Doctorate from the University of Birmingham in 2000, having focused his postgraduate study on the "Trajectory of Memory", examining how Holocaust survivor testimony developed over time.
Smith is a member of the United States delegation to the Inter-governmental Taskforce on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF), founded by Sweden, the US and the UK on the personal initiative of the then Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson.
One early outcome of the work of the ITF was the development of the UK's national Holocaust Memorial Day, inaugurated in 2001.
On 15 August 2009, Smith took up the post of executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, the archive of Holocaust survivor testimonies initiated by Steven Spielberg in 1994.
On 21 July 2010, almost twenty years after the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre was founded, Smith, his brother James and their mother Marina were each awarded honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by Nottingham Trent University.