Iván Szelényi (born April 17, 1938 in Budapest) is a Hungarian-American sociologist, as of 2010 the Dean of Social Sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Szelényi studied at the External Trade Faculty of the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest, where he graduated in 1960.

In 1974, a transcript of a book which he wrote with fellow sociologist and author György Konrád, titled The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, was brought out of Hungary.

One year later he was invited to Flinders University of South Australia where he was the Foundation Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department until 1980.

In 2010, he became the Dean of Social Sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi, where he continues to teach today.

He studied the inequality in urban communities and the structural problems of the capitalistic and socialistic society.

Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary (1988), Social Conflicts of Post-communist Transitions (1992) and Making Capitalism without Capitalists (1998).