Professor Yagil Levy, from the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, and Head of the Open University Institute for the Study of Civil–Military Relations, is the 2026 recipient of the Robin Williams Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship, Teaching, and Service by the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to scholarship, teaching, and service.
Professor Yagil Levy discusses his research and what winning the award means to him:
A central theoretical question in the field of civil–military relations has guided my academic work from its very beginning: what are the social and political mechanisms that shape military conduct? I have sought to challenge the conventional view that the military is fully subordinate to elected political institutions and instead, offer an analysis of the processes and mechanisms that make civilian control of the military far more complex.
Part of my work has focused on theoretical and comparative questions, while another has examined the Israeli case. My research has explored the military's latent social functions, including the reproduction of inequality; militarization; the impact of the military's social composition on its conduct; the emergence of hierarchies of exposure to life-threatening risks and their influence on the use of force; the impact of religion on the military; and, in recent years, the legitimation mechanisms of the use of force.
The theoretical contribution of this body of research to the critical tradition in the sociology of the military, together with the conceptual framework it has developed, formed the basis for the decision to recognize my work with this award.
An equally important part of my professional identity is my role as a public sociologist. For the past twenty years, I have regularly written opinion columns for the Israeli daily Haaretz, motivated by a commitment to bringing sociological knowledge into the public sphere and fostering critical discussion of social and political issues. I am especially delighted that this dimension of my work was also recognized in the award committee's citation.