Wang Family Excellence Award Winner Brian Levin honored at reception

Cal State San Bernardino criminal justice professor and director of the university’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism Brian Levin was honored for his work and winning the 2020 CSU Wang Family Excellence Award at a reception on Feb. 27.

“Brian exemplifies Cal State San Bernardino’s mission to provide valuable and dedicated instruction to our students and in serving our community for the greater good,” said CSUSB Provost Shari McMahan, who hosted the reception.

The Wang Family Excellence Award from the California State University is given annually to the university system’s outstanding faculty members and one outstanding staff member who, through extraordinary commitment and dedication, have distinguished themselves by exemplary contributions and achievements. Levin was honored in the Outstanding Faculty Scholarship category.

Levin is the fifth CSUSB faculty member to receive a Wang Family Excellence Award, joining Diane Halpern (psychology, 1999), Robert Blackey (history, 2003), Alan L. Smith (geology, 2006) and Stuart Sumida (biology, 2008).

For more than three decades, Levin has been doing more than just keeping an eye on people who inflict some of the worst harm humans wreak on each other. He takes his original and collaborative trend analysis to Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Department of Justice, and also to community stakeholders, because he believes a civil democracy’s market place of ideas should be informed by facts at all levels.
 
From that perspective, Levin has with repeated accuracy identified trends not only to help law enforcement and policymakers fight hate crimes and other extremist acts, but also to inform the public through independent and timely data. Along the way, he has earned the reputation for being one of the most knowledgeable and accessible scholars of extremism and remedies to it. He is often called upon by governmental and academic bodies and journalists around the world for his insight and analysis.

Before entering academia in 1996, Levin served as associate director-legal affairs for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Klanwatch/Militia Task Force in Montgomery, Ala., and as a corporate litigator for the law firm of Irell & Manella. He was also a New York City police officer in Harlem and Washington Heights during the 1980s, and received citations for academics and excellent police duty.