Spring 2005

Definition of Excellence

President of Lincoln Center presented with Hobart Alumni Association’s Highest Honor

by Brenda Pittman

Reynold Levy’s eyes have seen things many never will.
While president of the International Rescue Committee for six years, he spent half that time in the world’s most troubled spots coordinating assistance for untold numbers of refugees who were fleeing racial, religious or ethnic persecution or had been uprooted because of war or civil conflict.

Images of human misery — poverty, starvation, disease and death horrifically played out in more than 25 countries the IRC works with — are hard to forget.

How could they be?

So it’s understandable why on February 3, when Levy received the Hobart College Alumni Association’s highest honor — the Medal of Excellence — he expressed concern and sadness over the plight of earthquake and tsunami victims in Asia, plus others.

“Incalculable suffering befalls humankind as well in the eastern Congo, in northern Uganda and in the Darfur region of the Sudan, where death by the thousands from armed conflict, starvation and disease comes with every passing month. Perhaps even less understandably, this devastation emanates from man-made causes,” Levy said.

Since 1970, the Medal of Excellence has been awarded to those who have brought honor to their alma mater through outstanding accomplishments in their business, profession or community service. Levy received his at a gala at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, of which he is president. About 300 members of the HWS community attended, including past Medal recipients, students, friends and family members.

Board of Trustees Chairman Charles H. Salisbury Jr. ’63, P’94, listed Levy’s numerous contributions in all three areas, saying his “leadership in the world of philanthropy reflects great credit on himself and Hobart College and it is for this reason we honor him this evening.”
As he said that night, Levy later repeated that it was a privilege to receive the same award bestowed on other distinguished Hobart graduates. He singled out his former Hobart classmate, Dr. Robert Peter Gale ’66, L.H.D. ’87, a bone marrow specialist whose intervention in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster saved many lives and eased much suffering.

“I feel flattered and honored and humbled…” Levy said.

Clearly like Gale, Levy discovered he wasn’t able to look the other way when presented with an opportunity to alleviate human suffering — no matter how impossible the task seemed.
“It’s one thing to say that 3 billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day. It’s quite another thing to go and see how they are living,” he said.

Once he actually saw, Levy’s immediate response was to help. But he struggled at times to not become overwhelmed, as the needs always surpassed available resources.

“You build a school and 500 children now have classrooms, desks and paper and eight miles away there is an equivalent population with kids who have no school and no money to build it. Or you build latrines with local staff to satisfy the sanitation need for the population of 20,000 and you travel 20 miles away and there is an equivalent need and you have no money,” he said.

Consequently, Levy said it was essential that both he and his staff remain focused on what they could do.

“So you tell them how important and meaningful their work is and that they need to constantly look at the glass that is half full,” he continued. “The best part is when you go to Burundi and see a group of children who are listless, appear emaciated and are showing signs of dehydration and you are able to bring some doctors and nurses in. And then you go back home, raise some money and wire it to the capital and it finds its way to the village you were in. And just two or three months later you’re sent digital photos of these same kids playing soccer.”

Levy said he never ceased to be heartened by how those who are seemingly without resources, but who are creative, courageous, resilient and love their families and country, can with “just a little bit of help quickly overcome obstacles and build a livelihood.”
That’s why his advocacy work with donor governments and other public and private aid sources — “to fill the other half of the glass” — was such a critical component of his work.

Levy said he often took the heads of these organizations to the countries where the IRC was stationed because he believed if they saw with their own eyes, they would respond with their hearts.
“I was obsessed with raising money to address the overwhelming needs I saw and the ones my staff were regularly communicating with me,” he recalled.

As rewarding as the work was, the daily intensity of trying so hard to effect change takes its toll. After six years, Levy knew it was time to channel his energies elsewhere.

“I didn’t leave those experiences behind,” he noted. “Working to assist refugees takes you back to the basics — real basics. It makes you really appreciate all of life’s essentials like a glass of pure drinking water. I was certainly a changed person and I’ve never been the same since. I care very much about refugees and I care very much about what goes on in countries that house them.”

Once Levy decided to move on in 2001, he had already accepted an offer to teach at Harvard Business School. But when he was offered Lincoln Center presidency, his love for the arts and loyalty to his hometown beleaguered by 9/11 made him say yes.

Some might think it would be a difficult transition to go from heading a relief organization that helps the poorest of the poor to leading what he called the world’s “pre-eminent performing arts center comprised of 12 of the most consequential institutions of their kind.”
Not for Levy.

“What I try to do is invest myself fully in the job I am in and do everything I can to address the challenges I’m faced with,” he explained. “And then, when it’s time for whatever reasons to move on, I engage in the same process. When I got to Lincoln Center, I invested myself fully in its challenges.”

And they were considerable given New York City’s emotional climate after 9/11. Many questioned the city’s resilience after that tragic day.
“People wondered, would students still continue to come to universities here or would their parents fear for their safety? Would Wall Street maintain its loyalty to the city under these circumstances? What would happen to the city’s economy? And what about all the great pre-9/11 plans that were on the drawing board or in the works? And for many, there was also a question mark over whether Lincoln Center’s redevelopment would happen. I wanted to help answer one of those questions definitively. And it pleases me to say the answer to that question is ‘yes,’” he said.

In addition to overseeing Lincoln Center and managing the Lincoln Center campus — home to the Metropolitan Opera, Juilliard School and New York Philharmonic — Levy is heading a major capital, campus-wide, decade-long redevelopment project slated to begin in 2006.
Its transformation will not only greatly enhance the campus’ look and feel, but 65th Street that runs through it.

Levy said a recent economic development study showed that Lincoln Center injects $1.5 billion annually into the New York metropolitan economy and that real estate values have risen at a rate four times higher “in this zip code than any other in the city.”

“This area around us is a very, very attractive place to live and work and I think the reason the architect’s design has been received with such enthusiasm is that it will enhance still further the attractiveness of Lincoln Center,” he said.

Plans also include expanding Lincoln Center’s outdoor performances and “experimenting with telecasting out-of-doors what is happening inside,” to make the arts accessible to more people as Lincoln Center founders envisioned.

While Levy says Lincoln Center’s impact extends “far beyond the 20,627 seats of the 22 venues we own, beyond the hundreds of public schools in which we work, even beyond the 5 million people who annually attend our events or visit our campus,” he dreams of the day when many more lives will be enriched by it.
“It’s a privilege to be here to help and guide this institution at a time of major change,” he said.

Beyond Levy’s leadership and support of patrons and donors, he says the success of Lincoln Center’s transformation will also be attributable to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “outstanding” support.
“Because of his leadership, the fate of other city redevelopment projects in the works before 9/ll, as well, are no longer in question,” he said.

Levy lives in Riverdale, N.Y., with his wife, Elizabeth Cooke Levy. He has a son, Justin, and stepdaughter, Emily.

A political science major at Hobart who was frequently on the dean’s list, he was elected Phi Beta Kappa. An active member of the Herald staff, he served as a freshman adviser and president of Pi Gamma Mu, the honorary social science society. After graduation, he attended the University of Chicago Law School from 1966-67 and received his M.A. in 1968 and his Ph.D. in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Government and Foreign Affairs. He also earned a J.D. degree from Columbia University School of Law.

Levy has held high-level positions at AT&T and taught law, political science and nonprofit business management at Columbia University, New York University, Baruch College and Adelphi University. In 1977, he became executive director of the 92nd Street Y, a leading cultural, educational and social services institution in New York City. Under his leadership for seven years, the organization’s cultural and athletics programs flourished. In 1984, he joined AT&T as a senior officer and assumed responsibility for the company’s Foundation, overseeing myriad programs that educated, inspired and empowered people worldwide.

He also has been involved in many other charitable interests, serving on the boards of the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Municipal Art Society of New York, the Roundabout Theater Company and the Consortium for the Advancement of Private Higher Education. He currently serves on the boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Fordham University and the Center for Global Development.

Levy has remained faithful and connected to Hobart, serving as a class agent, admissions volunteer and a member of his reunion fund-raising committee. He returned to campus to speak at President Richard H. Hersh’s inauguration in 1991, and again in 2000 as an honored speaker for the Druid Lecture Series.

Levy says Hobart’s influence has figured prominently in his success — sentiments he gratefully shared in Lincoln Center after receiving the 2005 Medal of Excellence.

“Tonight, I celebrate Hobart and William Smith Colleges. You taught us that ideas matter deeply ... That ideas have consequences. That ignorance imprisons and truth liberates … It was at Hobart that the values animating the civil rights movement, the women’s movement and the peace movement took shape for me … Somehow, the confidence exhibited in me then nurtured the notion that through informed reflection and applied energy, the world could change, and I might make a small difference … And, truly, I have found that there are few pleasures more enduring than offering gifts to others of access to learning in all of its forms, of relieving pain, of helping to repair lives and restore livelihoods, and of strengthening institutions, like Hobart, like Lincoln Center, that matter so much to all those who encounter them.” ?