Empathy is Not Optional: The Story of Mike Leven's Brutal Law Professor

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Learn more at l'oréalparis.com. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories and we tell stories about everything here on this show. From the arts to sports, then business to history and everything in between, including your stories, send them to ouramericanstories.com for some of our favor. Mike Levin was president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, one of the great hoteliers of all time, a legend in his business. He also happens to be a friend who almost every time I talk to him, I learn something about him, myself and life. He's what you would call a wise man. And we need more wisdom in this country.

And we love bringing wisdom to this show. Up next is a story Mike tells about his time in law school. Mike had graduated from Tufts. He's a Boston guy, a diehard Patriots fan. We'll forgive him for that. And in the end, this is a story about empathy and about life. And he's a businessman talking about empathy. And ordinarily, you wouldn't think that would happen.

Let's hear Mike and his story. Tufts was a really great experience and prepared me to go to law school. So I applied to law school and I took the LSATs.

And I'm never a great test taker. But I scored in those years 75 or 78th percentile, something like that. So I decided I'd apply to all the best law schools except Harvard and Yale. So I applied to Columbia, I applied to Stanford, I applied to Michigan, I applied to NYU and University of Chicago, which at that time, those were all the highest rated schools. I got into all of those schools in law school.

And even with my LSAT test, it was a little easier then. And I got a scholarship to University of Chicago because they were trying to recruit from the East Coast. And Tufts had the right to pick a student who was getting in to take the scholarship. So I got a scholarship and I did get into Columbia. But how fate works, I was supposed to go to Columbia with a good friend of mine from Tufts, a guy named Robert Field.

And his father had a law firm, was partners with a law firm in New York City. And he said, go to law school with me and then we can work in the firm together. I said, oh, gee, that's a ready-made job. I said, great, we'll go to school together. Well, he didn't get into Columbia and I did. So I decided not to go to Columbia and take the scholarship and go to Chicago. So that changed my life too. And I worked my butt off in Chicago. I was lonely.

It was the first time, other than summer camp, that I was away from home that far. But I really put my nose to the grindstone. I took my Latin school study habits into law school. We had five courses in the first, it was a trimester. We took the exams.

I went home for Christmas and when I got back, I got my marks. And I did very well on four of the courses and on one course I got a 41. It was a contracts course. And of all the courses to get a 41 on, you would think that no one in the world in contracts could possibly get a lousy mark in contracts. I mean, it's really a relatively simplistic course compared to criminal law and real estate and a few of the other things I was taking. Anyway, the professor of the course was a guy named Malcolm Sharp.

All I knew about Malcolm Sharp was his book that we were using and that he had been one of the criminal lawyers defending the Rosenberg trial with the two spies that were eventually executed for treason in the United States. So he was a pretty famous guy and he started the class and he said, if anybody had any questions about their exam, please come and see me. Well, I'm now, this had been, this was 1959, 1960, I'm now 21 or 22 and I'd never talked to a teacher ever.

I never went about a mark. You know, teachers were authority figures. I mean, I grew up with teachers and policemen and firemen and like a rabbi or a priest or anybody else. I mean, authority figures, you know, yes sir, yes sir.

I mean, that's the way I was taught. And so I said, well, I guess I better go see this guy because I think I'm going to flunk. So I went to see Malcolm Sharp and I'm terrified. I go in and I hear and he said, well, why are you here Levin? And I said, I'm here because I don't understand why I got a 41. And he said to me, I'll never forget it.

He said to me, you don't understand contracts and I don't think he ever will. And I left and I went back to my room, I got my books, I went to the bookstore, I sold my books back to the bookstore. My roommate was a guy named Richard Boghossian who went to Tufts with me, a terrific guy for me, became an ambassador to Nigeria.

He was in foreign service, a wonderful guy. I said, I'm leaving. I'm getting in my car, I had a 59 Volkswagen that I got for graduation, it was $1,565. And I was going to get in my car, pack up and go home. And so he said, don't go, don't go. I said, no, I'm going, I sold my books.

Next thing I know, I got a call from the dean, Edmund Levy, who became eventually the attorney general of the United States. He said, I'd like to see you, I went to see him, I told him the story. He said, please don't go. He said, you finish the year, you're going to be fine. Don't worry about it.

He knew a contract, of all the courses, a contract was probably not that, you don't have to be a genius to pass a contracts course, the way they did it in those days. So I said, no, I'm going. I wrote a letter to my parents so the letter would arrive before I got there.

But this is an interesting story because if I could redo it, I would have finished the first year. I think it was a bad decision on my part, it was emotional, it was just so difficult to think that I could get such a lousy mark. So I drove home, it was about a 19 hour drive at the time.

I had a sing on the way home in the car to keep myself from falling asleep. I got home, I had no idea what my parents were going to say, I was the first graduate student person to get a professional degree. You can imagine what that means to first generation Americans and what have you.

And when we come back, more of what happens next as Mike returns to his family, no diploma in hand. Mike Levin's story continues here on Our American Story. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we're asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.

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It's just mean. Mike's returning home. Let's listen to what happens next. So I walked up the door and the door was open. My father was standing at the door and he said, welcome home.

And after a tearful greeting, when we had dinner that night, they said to me, what are you going to do? And I said, well, I said, Boston University is down the street. Let me take a look at some graduate programs and maybe I'll get a degree in something.

And that's how everything else started. As I went to Boston University, I got into a master's in public relations and communications and it was a year-long program with a thesis. And I had a lot of time on my hands. I had been a camp counselor over the summers and a director of athletics and assistant head counselor. I've had some administrative jobs and whatever.

And there was a part-time job posted and I thought I could make some money and pay as I was going. And it was at the Morgan Memorial Home for Boys and it was sort of like an assistant social worker. So, well, I had to be close to being a counselor at camp, you know, the same kind of thing. And I went down there and I get greeted by a guy whose name was John Moreland. He was about 6'5, must have gone 250, found out he was a former football player for Grambling, an all-black college.

And he was a PhD in social work. Took my resume, you know, he talked to me, he said, okay, I'm going to give you the job. And he said to me, you've never worked for a black guy, have you? I said, no, it didn't make any difference to me, I didn't care.

Anyway, I had a nice experience there for the year. And at the end of the year, Dr. Moreland calls me in the office and I said, look, I'm going to be looking for a job. He said, I'll tell you what, he said, I'll hire you here, why don't you become permanent? And he said, I'll pay for you to get a master's degree in social work.

I said, I need to make more money, I'm getting married in May and I don't know if I could afford to be married in this situation. So I said, will you write me a letter of recommendation? And he said, sure.

And I saved the letter, I could read it to you, yeah, and it says, to whom it may concern. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to recommend to you Michael A. Levin. The young man came to work with us about a year ago and during this period has contributed a great deal to the efficiency of our unit. However, there are several intangibles beyond efficiency which have accrued to us in consequence of his presidency. He is jovial, personable, and intelligent fellow.

He has been found to be circumspect and is dealing with all members of the organization. He has made up for lack of experience by initiative, desire, and in short, hard and thoughtful work. He put his heart into his job at all times. Mr. Levin will be an asset to anyone, whether in an employment or a social situation. Lastly, I can only say Mr. Levin's presence will be very much missed. This young man has an excellent future in store for him.

His executive potential is paramount. Thank you. Sincerely yours, J.B. Moreland. To this day, every time I look at that letter, I don't understand how he possibly could have known in one year with the exposure I had working 30 hours a week that that description of me could be written.

I don't ever remember being jovial. I don't remember, I know I worked hard, I know I read all the files, I know about, I wanted to learn about the kids that were in the home so I kept pulling the files out and understand there were 15 or so resident kids. And I remember that one was a descendant of Ulysses S. Grant, the President of the United States family, and they were troubled kids and that his parents were all military and they made him sit at attention at the table when he was one or two years old and it stuck in my head.

It was a very racially mixed group, no one cared, I mean it was very integrated. The ability to be able to project yourself into someone else's position and emphasize with them, like I talk a lot about when you have to terminate somebody and I talk about terminations and firing, it's the most hideous thing you have to do unless the person is a thief or a rapist or something like that, but for the lack of being able to perform the job, I mean I would put myself in a situation of thinking about what do you think it feels like when somebody tells you you can't perform anything and I think that the experience with Malcolm Sharp was really one that always stayed with me. How could the guy do that to me when all he had to do was to say Mr. Levin, let me explain to you how you could have done from a 41 to a 61, I want to help you.

My whole life would have changed on that page, now I don't know if it would have changed favorably or not, but it would have changed. So when you're in a position, an authoritative position, your responsibility with people and customers has to be how do you help them, not how do you hurt them, and I don't think it's any different with your children, when you bring up your children, I mean nobody has experience being a parent unless they're a parent, you're learning from day one, what's the difference between a child and your employee, what's the difference between a child and your customer, it's the same thing, it's being able to say can you project yourself into what it feels like. So when I began to develop a termination technique to say look, I made a mistake, and the person looked at me and said yeah, I said I don't think the job fits, I should have thought of it, I want to take some responsibility, but you have to go, and that was that difference in saying you failed, you're out, I'm disappointed in your performance, and you know when I was a high school basketball player, I was a pretty good player, in the state tournament I played 30 seconds, the last 30 seconds, I wasn't on the floor, the last minute or so, he just put me in, my parents were at the game, because I was the sixth man basically, so the next season we had an alumni game, and I came back from Tufts where I was playing some freshman basketball, and I had improved a lot, I scored 22 points in the alumni game, and the coach came over to me afterwards and said Mike, where were you last year, I took my finger and I pointed to the corner of the bench, I was there, you know, I said oh. So I think after all is said and done with all this we could walk through job after job after job, but you know and I know people don't change, they are who they are, and many years later you know I ran into a guy, a professor at law school at Duke, was on a board with me and he happened to know who Malcolm Sharp was, and he said oh I can understand that he behaved that way with everybody. And you've been listening to Mike Levin, and now you know why we tell you he's one of the wise men, and we like bringing voices from every walk of life here on this show, Mike obviously running the Las Vegas Sands, no small feat, helping move and create Holiday Inn worldwide, one of the great hoteliers, but in the end it's his human nature and his humanity that always comes to the fore, talk to anybody about Mike, they'll tell you.

And by the way if you have a leader in your community, somebody in the business world, a church leader, wherever, an education person, my dad was a great leader at a school system where he was a superintendent for 20 years, we'd love to hear their voice, bring wisdom across the airwaves and love, and Mike epitomizes both words, Mike Levin's storytelling, his wisdom, here on Our American Stories. This is Tanya Raad from Scrubbing Inn with Becca Tilly and Tanya Raad. This is what you do when you've just found that statement handbag on eBay and you want to build an entire wardrobe around it. You start selling to keep buying, yep, on eBay. Remember that all black everything phase? List it and buy all the color. Feeling more vintage than ever?

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