Daniel Lev

Who was Daniel Lev?

Daniel Saul Lev was an American political scientist and scholar on Indonesia.

Lev was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. In his youth, he participated in the Golden Gloves competitions for amateur boxing. He graduated from Miami University in 1955 and received his doctorate from Cornell University, where he became a member of the Modern Indonesia Project. Lev first traveled to Indonesia in 1959 and stayed in the country for three years. Because of his experience in Indonesia, Lev became a proponent of law reform after observing the "systematic dismantling" of its legal system under Presidents Sukarno and Suharto.

After returning to the United States, he became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Lev's opposition to the Vietnam War was not well received by the university and likely prevented him from receiving tenure. Soon after, he moved to Seattle to teach at the University of Washington before finally retiring in 1999. As a scholar of Indonesian law, Lev helped the country's lawyers and activists continue their education in the United States.