My guess is that Levinas is being read in those parts of Anglo-American universities that embraced French poststructuralism and who were concerned by the ethical impoverishment the deconstruction stream of this philosophical movement. Ethics is becoming a central concern in the humanities (and social sciences?) and Levinas is rapidly becoming a central figure. The exception to this claim would be the theological reception of Levinas in the Anglo-American Catholic universities.

Why the turn to Levinas amongst continental universities in Anglo-Amercian universities? My judgement is that it is because Levinas' chief philosophical concern was with ethics as a first philosophy and that ethics is to be understood in terms of an infinite responsibility to the other. The attraction of this is that it breaks with the liberal individual subject concerned with rights or utility and driven by self-interest by introducing inter-personal relations; and provides a way to grasp that relation in terms of a face-to-face relation.

What Levinas argues is that Heidegger's Being and Time presupposes, but does not explore, an ethical relationship with the other human being or person to whom I speak. Levinas argues that this relation takes place in the concrete situation of speech--- of conversing with a particular person. It is this relationship which is ethical. Unless or social relationships are underpinned by an ethical relationship to the other person then we fail to acknowledge the humanity of the other person.

It is appealing isn't it? Much better than utilitarianism which treats the other person as an object of my self interest that I can instrumentally use to further my self interest. It questions the assumption of a spectator view from nowhere by highlighting the perspective of a individual emmersed in the world.