We have some news: Associate Professor Daniel Levine, a faculty member in UA’s Department of Political Science, has just been appointed by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees as the Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies. He will now have a co-appointment to both Political Science and the Department of Religious Studies, teaching equally for both units — with his first REL course (a Core course on religion and politics) coming in the Spring 2020 semester.
Dr. Levine studies International Relations, political philosophy and theory, as well as Middle Eastern politics. His research draws on Frankfurt School social theory and on the history and philosophy of social science to examine the interactions between academic scholarship and public policy. Currently, his focus is on fear: both the direct experience of it, and its “afterlife” in history and public memory, as well as in the workings of political institutions and in discussions and implementations of policy.
Apart from his role in Political Science, Dr. Levine will contribute to both the REL major, the Judaic Studies minor, as well as REL’s MA degree.
At the same Board of Trustees meeting, the Board also appointed Professor Steven Jacobs as the Emeritus Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies — a position that honors both his nearly 20 years in REL’s endowed Chair and his continuing service to UA as a faculty member in REL. During his time holding this endowed position, Prof. Jacobs taught scores of REL students and published no fewer than 15 books (whether single author, co-author, or edited multi-author volumes) and over 50 articles, chapters, and encyclopedia entries as well as delivering over 50 presentations, either as an invited lecturer or conference participant.
The Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies, commemorated on a plaque in REL that contains the names of all of its original donors (see above), has been held by a handful of scholars since it’s establishment just over 30 years ago (on June 17, 1988), with Dr. Jacobs’s tenure being the longest by far. So we welcome Dr. Levine to this new role and we congratulate Dr. Jacobs, looking forward to both of their future contributions to the Department — we hope you’ll congratulate them as well.
REL faculty will get a chance to discuss his research with him when Dr. Levine presents some of his recent work at a colloquium with the faculty this week.