User:L12ra/Harvey J. Levin

Harvey J. Levin (July 1, 1924-April 30, 1992) was University Research Professor in the Department of Economics at Hofstra University (1989-92), Augustus B. Weller Professor of Economics at Hofstra (1964-89), and Founder and Director of its Public Policy Workshop (1975-92). He was also a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Policy Research. Among other studies, he was author of Fact and Fancy in Television Regulation – An Economic Study of Policy Alternatives (Russell Sage Foundation and Basic Books, Inc., 1980), The Invisible Resource – Use and Regulation of the Radio Spectrum (Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), Broadcast Regulation and Joint Ownership of Media (New York University Press, 1960), and Business Organization and Public Policy (Holt-Rinehart, 1958), a collection of essays edited with commentary. At the time of his death, he was at work on a subsequent book, Harvesting the Invisible Resource – Global Spectrum Management for Balanced Information Flows, which was to be published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Levin published numerous scholarly papers on public policies towards television broadcasting, space satellites and the radio spectrum resource, and participated frequently in conference panels on the same, for the American Economics Association, the Annenberg Washington Program, the Atlantic Economic Society, the International Institute of Communications, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the International Communications Association, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, the Pacific Telecommunications Council, the Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conferences, and the Western Economic Association International.

Among other organizations, he consulted for the President's Office of Telecommunications Management, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the FCC's Public Advisory Committee on the World Administrative Radio Conferences (WARC88), the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, the General Accounting Office, the Committee for Economic Development, the Department of Justice/Antitrust Division, and the Federal Trade Commission/Bureau of Economics.

For forty years spanning five decades, as the world’s first communications economist, Dr. Levin researched, published, and proposed innovative economic and regulatory solutions that anticipated -- and later addressed -- the problems of competing rights and access to the airwaves, or electromagnetic spectrum. According to members of his field, he was several decades ahead of his time in addressing the economic ramifications of the radio spectrum, long before others were concerned with the airwaves as a resource.

In pioneering the economics of the airwaves and space satellites, Dr. Levin was often met with skepticism and dismissal by government and industry officials – even, initially, disbelief that the airwaves were a resource at all. It prompted his creation of the now widely used phrase "The Invisible Resource", also the name of his 1971 book which revolutionized the field.

Focusing on its political ramifications, Dr. Levin’s work was the first to illustrate the economic necessity and benefits of equitable, global allocation of the airwaves as a limited resource, and diversification of its ownership. He continued to penetrate the frontiers of communications economics even after it evolved into the highly pertinent field it is today – an evolution due, in large part, to his own contributions. In short, as one of his colleagues put it, he espoused "open communication for the weak as well as the strong."

Such achievements impelled Dr. Levin’s election to membership in the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C., an association of persons deemed to "have done meritorious original work in science, literature, or the arts, or... recognized as distinguished in a learned profession or in public service." They also earned him an invitation to place his papers in the Archive of Contemporary History, devoted to "the history and development of individuals who have played a prominent role in the twentieth century’s social, political, legal and economic scene."

Although, in the tradition of scholarly credibility, Dr. Levin was a stickler for scientific evidence and economic viability, he also viewed economics as an art. He saw it as a vehicle for facilitating social progress in creative ways, particularly the rights, opportunities, facilities and technologies of the underprivileged in America as well as in emerging third world countries. Most notably, Dr. Levin proposed a system in which latecomer users and emerging, underdeveloped countries would not be deprived of their use of the airwaves by the world powers or monopolies controlling the market.

Dr. Levin’s research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (1984-88, 1970-78), the Russell Sage Foundation (1978-79), and Resources for the Future (1980-82, 1964-69). He was Liberal Arts Fellow in Law and Economics at the Harvard Law School, 1963-64, and a Brookings National Research Professor in Economics, 1959-60. More recently, he was Visiting Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, 1982-83, and a Visiting Scholar, Stanford University (Department of Economics/National Bureau of Economic Research, Hoover Institute, Center for Educational Research at Stanford), Summers 1982-91. He was a member of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C. (1986-92), the Editorial Board of Telecommunications Policy (1989-92), and the Society of Columbia Scholars and the Harvard Law School Association of New York City (1991-92).

He was also a community activist with such organizations as the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, the National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, the Committee To Protect Journalists, the Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives, and the Long Island Coalition for Fair Broadcasting Honorary Advisory Board. In this capacity, he worked with public figures ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt and Fred Friendly to George McGovern, and contributed pieces to various journals including The New York Times and The Nation.

Three years after Dr. Levin's death, in 1995, the FCC started implementing his long controversial proposals by auctioning off portions of the radio spectrum, or broadcast frequencies, culminating in the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996. In 1997, partially inspired by Dr. Levin's research, the U.S. Congress recommended a voucher program for allocating the use of outer space for transportation and satellites, in its appropriations bill for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Dr. Levin's field of work continues to be developed by such colleagues as Molly Macauley, Eli Noam and Thomas Hazlett. His legacy lives on in his numerous publications, in U.S. communications policy, in his collections of personal papers at Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI), Hofstra University Archives and Research Libraries Information Network, and in the work of scholars and think tank groups like CITI and Resources for the Future.