Ramin Jahanbegloo
Toronto 43° 39' 12.53" N, 79° 23' 2.16" W Academia/Research Politics Person
Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian philosopher and academic who is currently based in Canada. He teaches at the University of Toronto as a professor of political science.
Jahanbegloo was born in Tehran, Iran. He has a doctorate in philosophy from Sorbonne University in Paris, France where he lived for twenty years. He was a post-doctorate fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He is married to Azin Moalej, the cousin of renowned Persian philosopher and scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Jahanbegloo's intellectual activity focuses on fostering constructive dialogue between divergent cultures. He has written numerous books and articles in Persian, English and French on the subject of Western philosophy and modernity.
In 1997-2001, he was an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto in Canada. During this period, he published his book for the first time in English, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (which had previously been translated into French. The book records a series of interviews with the famous philosopher Isaiah Berlin, which cover intellectual questions ranging from the moral philosophy of Tolstoy to the meaning of liberalism.
In 2001, he served at the National Endowment for Democracy as a fellow at the a federally funded program, known as the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program.
Upon returning to Tehran, he was appointed head of the Contemporary Philosophy Department of the Cultural Research Center. In his efforts to promote dialogue, he has interviewed scholars and intellectuals from all over the world, among them George Steiner, Noam Chomsky, Ashis Nandy and the Dalai Lama. In recent years, he invited Richard Rorty, Timothy Garton Ash, Antonio Negri, and Michael Ignatieff and other Western intellectuals to Iran.
In October 2009 Jahanbegloo became the winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain for his extensive academic works in promoting dialogue between cultures and his advocacy for non-violence.