You are a scholar of biblical and ancient Middle Eastern law at the University of Minnesota and the law school there. You are someone who is devoted your students and inspire them to new heights. For example, one of the students you guided received the first Rhodes Scholarship from the University of Minnesota in over twenty years, and one was awarded the University’s most distinguished undergraduate scholarship, the Talle Family Fellowship.
These personal efforts demonstrate what kind of person you are. But we especially delighted to encourage your original work on the unappreciated moral heroism of the German theologian, Gerhard von Rad. Van Rad was a scholar of Old Testament research at Heidelberg when the Nazi party came to power in 1933. The Nazis brought under their control all other institutions, including other political parties, trade unions, the Catholic Church and the universities. The University’s medical students trained in pathology at the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp, and its clinics promoted racial eugenics and forced sterilization programs. Ideological conformity was the sole criteria for faculty appointments, curriculum, and the awarding of graduate degrees.
`Von Rad stayed independent, fighting to teach the values of the Bible when his university colleagues were literally rewriting the Bible to make it an organ of Nazi propaganda. Detesting Nazi anti-Semitism, he deliberately focused his scholarship on the Old Testament. Despite extreme isolation and hardship, he stayed the course.
Professor Levinson, like Sullivan Ballou you have followed your heart, and it has shown itself in your teaching and your scholarship. We are delighted to extend to you this modest award in recognition of what you have done.
Congratulations!
Elissa and Bruce Peterson, Founding Members