Background
Lev, Daniel Saul was born on October 23, 1933 in Youngstown, Ohio, United States. Son of Louis and Bessie (Gessen) Lev.
Lev, Daniel Saul was born on October 23, 1933 in Youngstown, Ohio, United States. Son of Louis and Bessie (Gessen) Lev.
He graduated from Miami University in 1955 and received his doctorate from Cornell University, where he became a member of the Modern Indonesia Project.
In his youth, he participated in the Golden Gloves competitions for amateur boxing. 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. His dissertation titled The Transition to Guided Democracy: Indonesian Politics 1957–1959 analyzed Sukarno"s Guided Democracy principles became a classic reading on the development of the country"s political system.
Lev was a heavy smoker and died from lung cancer on July 29, 2006.
He had been writing a biography on Chinese Indonesian lawyer and human rights advocate Yap Thiam Hien at the time of his death. Over 900 pages of the book had been written, and two chapters remained unwritten.
(The compelling personal story of human rights lawyer Yap ...)
He was also a member of Human Rights Watch and served on the advisory committee of its Asia division.
Married Arlene C. Offenhender, March 22, 1958. Children– Claire Ellen, Louis Benjamin George.