Key Facts
Career & Education
About
Yuval Levin is an Israeli-American conservative political commentator, analyst, editor, scholar, and journalist, born on April 6, 1977, in Haifa, Israel. He immigrated to the United States as a child and has become a leading figure in conservative intellectual circles, specializing in American political institutions, culture, bioethics, public policy, and political philosophy. Levin earned a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in 1997 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought in 2003. Early in his career, he worked as a research staff member at the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies before serving as a policy advisor in the George W. Bush administration, focusing on domestic and health policy.
Since 2009, Levin has been the founding editor of National Affairs, a quarterly journal that bridges academic rigor with policy relevance, addressing conservatism, economics, and society. He has served as the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) since 2019, holding the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. At AEI, he oversees research on constitutionalism, family, technology, and governance. Levin is also a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a contributing editor at National Review since 2007, and co-founder and senior editor of The New Atlantis, a publication examining the ethical implications of science and technology. His media presence includes frequent appearances on outlets like PBS and CNN, alongside contributions to The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic.
Levin has authored several influential books, including The Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of Individualism (2005), The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (2013), and A Time to Build: Dismantling America's Broken Government and Restore What Works (2020). His scholarship emphasizes the role of institutions and civil society in mediating social and political life, critiques modern liberalism, and advocates conservative reforms aimed at addressing political polarization and institutional renewal. While respected in intellectual circles, Levin has faced criticism from both the political left for his conservative affiliations and from the right for his institutionalist stance opposing Trump-era populism.