ABOUT
DR. JEREMY I. LEVITT
Jeremy Levitt is President and CEO of the Stono Institute for Freedom, Justice and Security and the Distinguished Professor of International Law at Florida A&M University College of Law and former Dean of Law and Vice Chancellor’s Chair at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) Law School in Fredericton, New Brunswick (Canada). He is the first Black male to serve as a law dean in Canada, UNB’s first black law professor, and the first African-American to serve as dean in any discipline at UNB. He formerly served as associate dean for international programs and founding director of the Center for International Law and Justice at Florida A&M University. Dr. Levitt has served as a professor of law at Florida International University and DePaul University. He is one of the nation’s leading scholars on racial and social justice, international human rights and the international law and politics of Africa with noted expertise in the international law of the use of force and armed conflict, international policing, liberiation movements, conflict prevention, management and resolution, peace construction and peace-building, truth and reconciliation and transitional justice. Professor Levitt is also an expert in counter-terrorism, women’s rights and race politics. In 2012-2013, he was selected by the U.S. Fulbright Commission to serve as the Fulbright Research Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the University of Ottawa.
Photo: Taken while Dr. Levitt was Dean of Law at the University of New Brunswick, Canada.
INTERNATIONAL LAWYER, ADVISER & PEACEMAKER
Photos: Dr. Levitt with the current president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf while serving as International Technical Advisor to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission/Dr. Levitt participating in TRC hearing in Monrovia, Liberia, November 2008.
Professor Levitt has traveled, researched and worked in thirty-seven countries in Africa, and traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. He has held a variety of global orientated positions in the public and private sectors. For example, Professor Levitt formerly served as Head of the International Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) of the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Liberia (LTRC), Senior Legal Consultant to the Principal Defender’s Office of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal), Senior Legal Adviser to The Carter Center’s rule of law projects in Liberia, Special Assistant to the Managing Director for Global Human and Social Development at The World Bank Group in Washington, D.C., and as a Legal Aide to the Constitutional Assembly of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa during the country’s constitutional making process. During the summer of 2005, Professor Levitt was a Visiting Fellow at the world renowned Lauterpacht Research Center for International Law at Cambridge University.
TEACHER, AUTHOR & SCHOLAR
Photos: Dr. Levitt lecturing at Tufts University/Participants at Tufts University’s Barack Obama and American Democracy conference: Michael Eric Dyson, Diane McWhorter, Matthew Whitaker, Vince Brown, Jeremy Levitt, Patrick Sylvaine, Peniel E. Joseph and Yohuru Williams (April 2014)
Dr. Levitt has authored and edited seven books and written over thirty academic articles. He is presently writing a book on Martin Luther King Jr. and Pan-Africanism. In 2015, Dr. Levitt published a trailblazing women’s rights volume titled, BLACK WOMEN AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: Deliberate Interactions, Movement, and Actions (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and authored the ground-breaking study ILLEGAL PEACE AFRICA: An Inquiry into the Legality of Power-sharing with Warlords Rebels and Junta (Cambridge University Press, 2012). In 2009, he co-edited a cutting-edge text with Matthew C. Whitaker titled, HURRICANE KATRINA: AMERICA’S UNNATURAL DISASTER (University of Nebraska Press 2009), and in 2008 edited the first study to contemplate Africa’s contributions to international law, titled, AFRICA: MAPPING NEW BOUNDARIES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW (Hart Publishing, 2008). His first single author volume, THE EVOLUTION OF DEADLY CONFLICT IN LIBERIA: FROM ‘PATERNALTARIANISM’ TO STATE COLLAPSE (Carolina Academic Press, 2005) is highly praised as “original” and the “definitive work on the causes of Liberia’s cycle of deadly conflict” by noted political scientists and international lawyers.
EXECUTIVE LEADER & PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
Photos: Dr. Levitt with United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer/Dr. Levitt (middle) and members of the American Society of International (ASIL) task force on Blacks in ASIL (BASIL) including Henry J. Richardson III (left) Betsy Anderson, Jeremy Levitt (middle), Melida Hidgson, Ben Davis (right), Adrien Wing (front left), Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (front right).
Professor Levitt is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI), fellow of the American Bar Foundation (ABF) and Patron of the American Society of International Law (ASIL). Between 2002-2007, Dr. Levitt was a Term Member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFOR), the US’ premier think tank on world affairs. He is a regular contributor to the Orlando Sentinel and has been a frequent source for the national and international media. Professor Levitt is a sought after speaker in the United States and abroad.
Professor Levitt earned his Doctor of Philosophy in politics and international studies from the University of Cambridge (St. John’s College), Doctor of Law from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Arizona State University.