Ramin Jahanbegloo, University of Toronto, a noted writer and political theorist, is one of Iran's leading dissidents and will speak on Iran's foreign relations.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is a well-known Iranian-Canadian philosopher. He received his B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, History and Political Science and later his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Sorbonne University. In 1993 he taught at the Academy of Philosophy in Tehran. He has been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Ramin Jahanbegloo taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto from 1997-2001. He later served as the head of the Department of Contemporary Studies of the Cultural Research Centre in Tehran and, in 2006-07, he was the Rajni Kothari Professor in Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, India.
He is the author of more than 20 books in Persian, English, and French on philosophy, comparative politics and nonviolence. Among his books are Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (Phoenix, 2000), Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (Lexington Books, 2004), Gandhi: Aux Sources de la Nonviolence (Felin 1999), Penser la Nonviolence ( UNESCO 1999), The Clash of Intolerances ( Har-Anand 2007), India Revisited (Oxford University Press, 2007) and The Spirit of India (Penguin 2008).
He was arrested in April 2006 at the Tehran airport as he was about to leave the country to attend an international conference. He was placed in solitary confinement in a security wing of Evin prison for 125 days. He is presently professor of Political Science and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics at University of Toronto.