Ramin Jahanbegloo is a well-known Iranian philosopher who received his Ph.D. from the Sorbonne University, Paris. He has taught at the Academy of Philosophy in Tehran, been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. He has also taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and served as head of the Department of Contemporary Studies of the Cultural Research Centre in Tehran.

Jahanbegloo has published over 20 books, including Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (1992), Gandhi: Aux Sources de la Nonviolence(1998), Penser la Nonviolence (1999) Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (2004), India Revisited (2007) and The Clash of Intolerances (2007).

Jahanbegloo was the Kothari Chair from 20 December 2005 to 20 May 2007. In 2006, he was arrested and detained in Iran, leading to protests worldwide. He was released after 4 months, and rejoined as the Kothari Chair. He delivered the Rajni Kothari Lecture on 'The Intercultural Imperative: Thinking Peace in Today's World' on 5 December 2007 at CSDS.