eRHIC: The Electron Ion Collider at BNL and Its Spin Physics Program

We motivate the need for a future high luminosity, high energy polarized collider capable of deep inelastic scattering of polarized nucleons and nuclei. We propose that building a state of the art electron beam facility near the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) complex to use one of its beams for such a facility would be the most cost effective way to achieve the physics goals. After a brief introduction to eRHIC project at BNL we present the spin physics program at eRHIC. The unpolarized e-A physics program and technical status of the collider design and detector ideas are discussed in other talks