Koelbel 468A
Biography
Dr. Lev Szentkirályi* is an Assistant Teaching Professor with the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Division in the Leeds School of Business, where he teaches diverse courses on business ethics, global political economy, and environmental sustainability, which draw on his interdisciplinary Political Science training in normative political theory, environmental policy, and international relations. Dr. Szentkirályi also teaches occasional courses for the Philosophy Department, and he serves as the Faculty Director for Global Initiatives in Leeds, as the Faculty Fellow for Teaching and Clinical Professors with the Office of Faculty Affairs, and as the Treasurer of CU-Boulder’s chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. In an effort to bring his specialization in environmental justice to bear on public policy reform, he also serves on the City of Louisville Sustainability Advisory Board, which works with the Louisville City Council on diverse local sustainability issues.
Dr. Szentkirályi’s primary research centers on social and environmental justice and engages problems of environmental health risks, food insecurity, climate ethics, and just war theory. In striving to develop ethically-justified yet pragmatic policy proposals, the broader aim of his research is to explore practical ways in which vulnerable groups in our communities can be protected from injustices. His recent book, The Ethics of Precaution (New York: Routledge, 2019), revitalizes the debate over the precautionary principle by defending safeguards against scientifically-unverified environmental health threats and arguing that industry is morally obligated to take reasonable strides to prevent putting others in the way of potential albeit uncertain harm—especially vulnerable groups, like children, the elderly, the poor, and marginalized minority groups. At base, this requires industry to perform greater toxicity testing of the substances they expose the public to in order to determine actual risks to human health, to honor the public’s right to know by disclosing the findings of these tests, and to ensure that vulnerable groups are not exposed to inequitable levels of risk. The Ethics of Precaution has several practical implications for national and global policy reform, and theoretical implications on human rights and global governance, food justice, and climate ethics—implications which his current research explores. In addition to his contributions to edited volumes, Dr. Szentkirályi’s work has also appeared in International Political Science Review and Ethics, Policy, and Environment.
Education
Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder
M.A. in Philosophy, University of Connecticut
B.S. in Environmental Studies, Bowling Green State University
B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy, Bowling Green State University
* Pronounced: sěnt-kē-rŏ-yē :: “sent-key-rah-yee”