a professor in political science at the University of Toronto, has a doctorate from Sorbonne University in Paris. He was a post-doc at Harvard, headed the department for contemporary studies at the Iranian Cultural Research Bureau, and was professor of democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. A prominent intellectual, he tries to establish a dialogue between cultures. He wrote more than twenty books on Western thought and modernity, in English, French, and Persian. Works like Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (2000) and Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (2004) were greeted with critical acclaim. In 2006, Ramin Jahanbegloo was imprisoned for four months by the Iranian authorities, thus personally experiencing the consequences of intolerance he warns against in his works – notably, in The Clash of Intolerances (2007). Recently, he published The Spirit of India (2008). [040609]