[13] Sotloff's legacy is in part that he broke the Benghazi story to CNN, that there was no protest,[14][15] and that he foresaw the massive Syrian Refugee Crisis as he reported on the everyday people's suffering in Syria, thus earning him the reputation as "The Voice for the Voiceless.
[25][26] He transferred to the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel from 2005 to 2008, graduating cum laude with a major in government studies and counter-terrorism.
[14] In 2012, he reported in Time magazine about Al-Qaeda fighters and commanders from Libya flocking to Syria and shipping Libyan captured arms and ammunition on its way to join the fight to topple Bashar al-Assad's regime.
[42] According to Ann Marlowe, who worked with Sotloff in Libya, "he lived in Yemen for years, spoke good Arabic, deeply loved (the) Islamic world".
[43] Sotloff's journalistic work in Syria interviewing the everyday people, whose suffering led to the massive Syrian Refugee Crisis, is in large part what earned him the title of "The Voice for the Voiceless"[16] by Time, The Daily Telegraph,[18] and NBC News.
[17] He was described by those who knew him as a gentle man who "was driven to report on the humanitarian dimensions of the conflicts in the Middle East,[16] humbly referring to himself as a "stand-up philosopher from Miami".
[16] Janine Di Giovanni, the Middle East editor of Newsweek, told CNN, "He was concerned that he had been on some kind of a list, and this had been around the time that ISIS had been showing up and taking over checkpoints that had been manned before by the rebels.
"[33] On July 15, 2013, Sotloff arrived in Israel for his former roommate Benny Scholder's wedding and wanted to spend a couple of weeks there.
During a talk with Ben Taub, a journalist and philosophy student at Princeton University, he confessed to being tired of the Middle East, that he was "sick of being beaten up, and shot at, and accused of being a spy."
[50] On August 19, 2014, the terrorist organization The Islamic State (IS) released a video titled "A Message to America," which showed the beheading of fellow journalist James Foley.
[51] At the end of the video, ISIS threatened President of the United States Barack Obama, telling him that "his next move" would decide the fate of Sotloff.
[81][82][83] It currently overlooks the Atlantic Ocean at Greenspoon Marder Law Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where viewers can face the Middle East in his memory, as his remains were never returned.
The memorial, filled with metaphor and symbolism, contains in its layers some excerpts from the letter that Sotloff smuggled out to his family while held in captivity, when he realized he may not make it out alive.
[91] The 2LIVES Foundation has thus far signed on with United Nations/UNESCO, Columbia University School of Journalism, Reuters, Associated Press and others who spearheaded the first ever Global Safety Principles and Practices for journalists in New York on September 30, 2015.
The group announced unprecedented initiatives to share security information, provide subsidized safety training to freelancers, end impunity, and more.
To date, scholarships have already been set up in Steven Sotloff's name at Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire, University of Central Florida, and University of Miami[98][99] The 2LIVES Foundation has partnered with The Media Line, creating its new Press-and-Policy Student Program, to build a scholarship fund that will allow outstanding journalism students from universities around the world to learn and develop their skills, in Sotloff's name, through on-going participation with a working newsroom and veteran journalists stationed in the region of the world that captivates the interest of news readers worldwide as it did Steven Sotloff.
The family claims the Assad government provided support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant which was responsible for his murder.