Ken Levy-Church

After receiving his bachelor’s in philosophy from Dartmouth, Ken grounded himself in New Mexico building passive solar adobe homes. He returned to graduate education at the University of Michigan, where he received an interdisciplinary master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies and then a Ph.D. in Central Eurasian History. His dissertation examined the evolution of an agrarian revolutionary tradition in western Georgia. Over the course of his graduate studies he studied Russian, Turkish, Persian, and Georgian and spent extended periods in Russia, Turkey, and Georgia. While teaching Central Eurasian History at St. Lawrence University, he developed numerous courses pertaining to the region, including the History of the Russian and Ottoman Empires, as well as a class on 9/11 entitled “Why Do ‘They’ Hate ‘Us’?” He then left academia to pursue philanthropic work as a board member of the JEHT Foundation, which focused primarily on criminal justice in the U.S. and became the largest criminal justice foundation in the U.S. at the time. He also founded the Fair Food Foundation (now Fair Food Network) whose mission is the development of healthy food systems in inner city America. At present he is focused on the science and business of climate change, as well as promoting the work of The Land Institute.