Robert M. Levine (1941-2003) was a historian of Brazil and Latin America. He published numerous books on Brazilian cultural and political history, the Jewish diaspora in Latin America, and Cuban political history. A native of New York City, Levine attended Colgate University for his BA and Princeton University for his PhD. As a faculty member at SUNY Stony Brook (1966-1981), he played an important role in aiding refugee scholars from Latin American dictatorships in addition to his work for the Conference on Latin American History and the Columbia University Seminar on Brazil. The Portuguese translation of his first book, The Vargas Regime: The Critical Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) later became a bestseller in Brazil. From 1981 to his death in 2003, Levine built a nationally recognized graduate program in Latin American history while serving on the editorial boards of leading academic journals in the field, including the Hispanic American Historical Review and the Luso-Brazilian Review. Click here for a link to his obituary in the Hispanic American Historical Review.

Click here to read his letter to the editor of the New York Times about Brazil.