News From The Law School
Dedication of the Martin Levin Advocacy Center
By MARTIN LEVIN, Feb. 24, 2011
As I stand up here today, it’s obviously a great honor to have this incredible building bear my name. However, the reality is that I have done nothing to earn it. The sole reason my name is on this building is because my father gave $2 million cash. Not only did he give the lead gift, but he approached two of his friends, Bob Kerrigan and Bob Montgomery, to each give $300,000, and then he approached his sister-inlaw Teri to give $1 million cash in memory of her husband, Allen, the brother and closest of friends to my father and to me.
Thus, the real issue is not why my name is on this building, but why my father chose to have this building created. It’s not like he needed his name on another building here at the university. The answer to why my father did it is actually quite simple, and it’s the same answer as to why he provided $1 million in property to this university in the 1980s, and $10 million in cash to this university in the 1990s. Dad believes that a commitment to advocacy in this country could be the single most important action that assures this country’s success, and certainly that guarantees justice.
Why is this? What is it about advocacy that is so important to my father? Isn’t advocacy nothing more than trial law? Not to my father. My father doesn’t limit advocacy to trial attorneys, or even to lawyers. Instead, Dad sees advocacy as the process of someone critically and objectively considering an issue, meticulously researching it, logically reaching a conclusion, and then having the confidence and the ability to convey that conclusion even when it’s unpopular and contrary to the opinions being expressed by the vast majority of people.
Dad’s concern with the importance of advocacy has become even more heightened in recent times. Why? Because in today’s time everyone with a computer has the ability to disseminate opinions to millions of people in a matter of seconds even though the opinions might be baseless and meant solely to cause harm. In fact, these opinions can be highly targeted to individuals who think the same as the writer, and who are more than happy to act upon them. The dissemination of opinions no longer requires great oratory skills, physical presence and an arduously earned platform to convey them. This makes the world much more volatile and potentially hostile.
For the past 50 years of my father practicing law, he has spoken at great lengths regarding the importance of advocacy. In fact, I vividly recall a discussion my father and I had when I was 12 years of age on this very topic, and it has stuck with me to this day. But more significantly than speaking about his beliefs, my father has lived them even when it has been to his own detriment.
As is well known, Dad has often spoken out against the majority, against the authority, against the established and against the popular. He did this without consideration or concern for the consequences. When he perceived hatred, bigotry, prejudice or any other form of injustice, he made sure he was heard, even while others who did not like his voice made sure he paid the consequences. Dad never backed down, and he wants to make sure we are training all future lawyers to do the same. My father wants to make sure we have a facility at this law school that is teaching students not to become just lawyers but to become advocates.
I would like to end my remarks with some quotes by various historical figures who have echoed my father’s belief.
• Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent. – Napoleon Bonaparte
• To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides. – Archbishop Desmond Tutu
• To sin by silence when thou shall protest makes cowards of men. – Abraham Lincoln
• The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain neutrality. – Dante’s Inferno
• The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. – Albert Einstein
• The greatest sin of our time is not the few who have destroyed, but the vast majority who have sat idly by. – Martin Luther King Jr.
• In Germany they came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Catholic. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak. – The Rev. Martin Niemoeller
• Speaking out and being wrong does not shame me. Failing to speak out when I know I should makes my entire existence unbearable and pointless. – Fred Levin speaking to me at the age of 12.
I would like to thank my father, Aunt Teri, Bob Kerrigan, Bob Montgomery, President Machen and Dean Jerry for everything you have done and continue to do to make this university, this law school and this facility one of the top educational institutions in the world. I also would like to thank each of you and the remainder of Gator Nation for all you have done and will continue to do to make this world a much better place to live.
Go Gators.
