Levente Szentkirályi

  • Assistant Teaching Professor
  • Faculty Director of Global Initiatives
  • SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

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 is also a Faculty Associate with the Environmental Studies Department, he serves as the Faculty Director for Global Initiatives in Leeds and as the Faculty Fellow for Teaching and Clinical Professors with the Office of Faculty Affairs, and he is the Founder and Executive Director of the Szentkirályi Scholarship Fund.  His applied ethics research centers on public health risks, environmental sustainability, and corporate social responsibility.  In striving to develop ethically justified yet pragmatic policy solutions, the broader aim of Dr. Szentkirályi’s research is to explore practical ways in which vulnerable groups in our communities can be protected from injustices.

His first 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—arguing that industry is morally obligated to take reasonable strides to prevent putting others in the way of potential harm even when the possibility of injury is indeterminate.  Dr. Szentkirályi’s current book project with Oxford University Press is an edited volume, titled Future Uncertain: Overcoming Barriers to Effective Climate Policy.  Co-authored with Dr. Kris Karnauskas in CU’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, this book engages the genuine and manufactured challenges of uncertainty by bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners across the natural, social, and policy sciences on a host of climate-change-related problems.  From environmental skeptics to environmental alarmists, the noise and in-fighting discourages people from critically engaging the myriad and interrelated problems of climate change—and with its critical focus and unapologetic and pithy tone, this volume aims to reinvigorate those who have become apathetic or overwhelmed by reaffirming our capacity to overcome uncertainty, and by indicting those who abuse uncertainty to sow doubt and confusion or to advance private agendas at the expense of truth and the public’s interest.  In addition to his contributions to various 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”