About
- Rene H. Levy, Author -
Rene H. Levy, PhD is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle where he served as chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics for 26 years and Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery. His interest in neuroscience grew out of his work in the field of epilepsy where he published more than 300 research articles and edited several books on the treatment of epilepsy. Dr. Levy received numerous awards: “Ambassador for Epilepsy” in 1989, “Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science” in 2007, “Lifetime Achievement Award from the Epilepsy Foundation” in 2011, and in 2013, the highest award given by the American Epilepsy Society: the William G. Lennox-Cesare T. Lombroso Award. In 2022, Dr Levy received the Gary Neil Prize for Innovation in Drug Development, a scientific Award from the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
- Rene H. Levy, Thought Leader -
In the last decade, Dr Levy drew on his interest in neuroscience to author a first book called “Baseless Hatred: What It Is and What You Can Do About It” (Gefen Publishing). It received outstanding reviews and was widely distributed in English, Hebrew, and French.
In 2013, he addressed the Seattle Jewish community at a Town Hall event entitled “Crisis in Jewish Peoplehood”. With a group of volunteers, they founded the Project for Applied Peoplehood and Unity. He developed a Curriculum used to train “Ambassadors” recruited among community leaders to overcome divisive emotions and strengthen community cohesion.
His writings and lectures on the current Jewish peoplehood crisis have led some to consider him “one of the most creative and intriguing thinkers in the Jewish world today.”
- Rene H. Levy, Advocate -
After the 2016 election in the US, when political hatred became a source of societal cleavage among family and friends, Dr Levy was asked to make a contribution to address America’s political divide. His book “Mending America’s Political Divide: What Science Tells Us About Solving The Political Hatred Between The Left and The Right” published in 2021 offers solutions for political hatred that are science-based and often counterintuitive (depolarization methodology). This book received the NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Award in 2021. Articles on this book can be found at the UW Daily (https://www.dailyuw.com/news/article_a4bd8cf8-6697-11eb-ac99-ab37a4a96be5.html) and at KIRO News My Northwest (https://mynorthwest.com/2495598/political-hatred-biology/). He recently served on the Israel Committee of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
While lecturing for more than a decade on the subject of Sinat Chinam, Dr Levy collected data from several thousand Torah-observant Jews and wrote a new sefer to enable them to minimize violations of the Torah prohibition against hatred.