George Kent

1936 - 2025

Member of the IPRA Foundation Board of Directors 2012 - 2025

George Kent

George Kent was Professor Emeritus with the University of Hawaii. He was a professor in the Department of Political Science from 1970 until his retirement at the end of 2010.

He taught online as a part-time faculty member with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia and also with the Transformative Social Change concentration at Saybrook University in San Francisco.

Professor Kent’s approach centered on finding remedies for social problems, especially finding ways to strengthen the weak in the face of the strong. He worked on human rights, international relations, peace, development, and environmental issues, with a special focus on nutrition and children. His books include:

  • The Political Economy of Hunger: The Silent Holocaust. New York: Praeger, 1984;
  • The Politics of Children’s Survival. New York: Praeger, 1991;
  • Children in the International Political Economy. New York: Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 1995;
  • Freedom from Want:The Human Right to Adequate Food. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005;
  • (editor) Global Obligations for the Right to Food. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008;
  • Ending Hunger Worldwide. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2011.
  • Regulating Infant Formula. Amarillo, Texas: Hale Publishing, 2011.

Professor Kent was Co-Convener of the Commission on International Human Rights of the International Peace Research Association. He worked as a consultant with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and several civil society organizations. He was part of the Working Group on Nutrition, Ethics, and Human Rights of the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition. He was on the Governing Board of the Hawaii Food Policy Council, which he helped to start in November 2010 (http://www.hawaiifoodpolicycouncil.org/).

Professor Kent’s vita is available at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kent/VITAKENT.DOC and his publications list is at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kent/PUBLICATIONSKENT.DOC