SPEAKER: Mr Bernard Henri Levy
French Philosopher and Political Commentator

Bernard-Henri Lévy's cultural commentary, novels and journalism create such excitement that The Guardian noted he is "accorded the kind of adulation in France that most countries reserve for their rock stars." Lévy’s appeal bridges high intellect and low brow pop culture. Referred as just “BHL” in France, and known for his trademark elegance and suave appearance, he is one of the few who has served as both one of the world’s most influential intellectuals and on Vanity’s Fair’s 2005 International Best Dressed List.” His character and philosophical provocation has led the magazine to call him “superman and prophet: we have no equivalent in the United States.”

Lévy is one of the most highly acclaimed philosophers, journalists, activists and best-selling authors in Europe today. A celebrated thinker, his works of philosophy, fiction, and biography included in his over 30 books, have made him one of the world’s most admired intellectuals. Now Lévy has crossed the Atlantic with his newest book, American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, a bestseller on the lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, and The Washington Post. With incredible insight, Lévy offers up a sympathetic view of America through foreign eyes. Traveling the country, as Tocqueville did over 150 years ago, he discovers what it means to be an American and inaugurates a new conversation about what America is today and will be tomorrow. The Atlantic magazine ran five essays drawn from the book during 2005.

Deemed a flamboyant intellectual maverick who is an advocate of ethics and justice, Lévy was proclaimed leader of the New Philosophers, a group who broke away from the Marxist ideology dominating 1960s France and the hard-line French left typified by Jean-Paul Sartre. During this time, he solidified his relationship as a new voice with his revolutionary book, Barbarism with a Human Face.

Lévy’s stance on what he calls “anti-anti-Americanism” has made him a draw in the United States. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times in 2005, he stated: "Anti-Americanism is a horror. ... It is a magnet of the worst. In the entire world and in France in particular, everything that is the worst in people's heads comes together around anti-Americanism: racism, nationalism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism." His experiences in America go against the grain of French and American discord, causing him to advocate for the United States as a model of a democracy worldwide.

Maintaining an outspoken streak of activism, his reflection of the state of race relations within Europe and in the United States are considered highly observant. Levy also serves as co-founder of the antiracist group SOS Racism, and Action Internationale Contre la Faim. In addition, Lévy has held several diplomatic positions with the French government and in 2002, French President Jacques Chirac appointed him to head a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan in the wake of the war against the Taliban.

Originally a war reporter for Combat, the legendary newspaper founded by Albert Camus during the Nazi occupation of France, Lévy covered the war between Pakistan and India over Bangladesh. As a journalist who has traveled extensively within the Middle East, he has written several books about Islam and the region including his stunning, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? and Red India. As a filmmaker, he has traveled into the world of conflict in his documentaries Bosna! and A Day in the Death of Sarajevo.