Mark Andrew LeVine is an American historian, musician, writer, and professor. He is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.

Education

LeVine received his B.A. in comparative religion and biblical studies from Hunter College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University's Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He speaks multiple languages including Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Italian, French, German and English.

Israeli–Palestinian conflict

With regard to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, LeVine argues for a 'parallel states' scenario, involving the dissolution of borders and overlapping sovereignty across the entirety of historic Palestine. LeVine has recently theorized that the only trope which can explain what he calls Israel's 'totalitarian' control over Palestinian people is that afforded by Quantum Mechanics. By totalitarian he does not mean the systems that prevailed in Nazi Germany, Fascist states, or Communist Russia and China, but the intricate matrix of control established by the Israeli occupation throughout the spatial territory Palestinians inhabit, by virtue of which the Palestinians have no more influence over their life paths than an electron in a field does. This control extends to the airspace, and underground (harvesting the water resources), to the present and the past, making for a unique synergy of "bio" and "necro"-politics. He claims that maps created by ICAHD show that a dozen control parameters are in place at any one coordinate point in the West Bank. The result in his view is that the Israeli occupation,'represents criminalized state behavior at the most systematic, intricately planned and executed, widest possible scale, and longest duration.'

Music

LeVine is a rock guitarist and has played with noted rock and world beat musicians such as Mick Jagger, Chuck D, Michael Franti, and Doctor John. He recorded with Moroccan Hassan Hakmoun, and the French Gypsy band Les Yeux Noirs on Ozomatli's album Street Signs, which won the Grammy for Best Latin Rock/Alternative album in 2005.

Views

LeVine, in analyzing historian Noel Ignatiev's anti-racism writings on the white race, concurred in 2019 that "abolishing whiteness has never been more urgent", supporting Noel Ignatiev's position in the "condemnation of an irredeemable whiteness and the identities that flow from it" with a simple quote: “As long as you think you’re white, there’s no hope for you.”.

Books

LeVine's book Why They Don't Hate Us was hailed by Douglas A. Davis, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Haverford College as an innovative, trenchant analysis, massively documented, of the West's 'cultural jamming' within the modern Arab world, together with a powerful diagnosis of neoconservative thinkers and the pretensions of globalization. British journalist Bryan Appleyard gave it a mixed review in the London Sunday Times . Appleyard was sternly critical of the book's style and organization, and disparaged the ideological underpinnings, rooted in "idealism," which, he claimed, informed Levine's work. Appleyard nevertheless wrote, "LeVine is absolutely right and, indeed, quite brave to insist on the reality of complexity. Terrorism and war both tend to simplify world views and, without doubting their intellectual status, so do the utopians of the new right... Perhaps his book’s greatest virtue is that it introduces both the many shades of opinion and cultural complexity of the, largely, Arab world... LeVine detonates the uneasy but nonetheless profound complacency that seems to have invaded politics."

Co-edited books

Publications