Lawrence William Levine (February 27, 1933 – October 23, 2006) was an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

. He was born in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

and died in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

. He was noted for promoting multiculturalism and the perspectives of ordinary people in the study of history.

Life

He graduated from the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...

in 1955, and from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, with a master's degree and a doctorate in 1962, where he studied under

Richard Hofstadter Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916October 24, 1970) was an American historian and public intellectual of the mid-20th century. Hofstadter was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Rejecting his earlier historic ...

. He taught at Princeton University from 1962 to 1963, and then at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, from 1963 to 1994. After retiring from Berkeley, he taught at

George Mason University George Mason University (GMU) is a Public university, public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father ...

from 1994 to 2005. He participated in civil rights sit-ins at Berkeley and in the South, and the Free Speech Movement. He married Cornelia Roettcher Levine in 1964, with whom he wrote ''The People and the President: America's Conversation with FDR''; they had two sons, Joshua Levine and Isaac Levine, and a stepson, Alexander Pimentel.

Awards and honors

Levine was a

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and 30 individuals workin ...

in 1983, elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1985 and
Fulbright Scholar
in History from th
University of California - Berkeley
to th
University of Sydney
in 1988. He was president of the

Organization of American Historians The Organization of American Historians (OAH), formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S. and abroad incl ...

in 1992–93 and received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1994. An award in his name is given by the Organization of American Historians.

Works

* (reprint Harvard University Press, 1987, ) * * * * *

References

External links

"A Conversation with Lawrence Levine: The University Is Not the U.S. Army", ''NEH'', 1997
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levine, Lawrence W. City College of New York alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Columbia University alumni George Mason University faculty 1933 births 2006 deaths MacArthur Fellows 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers Historians from California 20th-century American male writers