Ramin Jahanbegloo (, born 28 December 1956 in Tehran) is an Iranian philosopher and academic based in Toronto, Canada. Biography Ramin 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 and had a daughter named Afarin Jahanbegloo. Academic and intellectual career 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 1991 he published his book Conversations with Isaiah Berlin in French, which was translated into English and published the following year. 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. Between the years 1997-2001, he was an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto in Canada. 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. Political detention In late April 2006, on his way to an international conference in Brussels, Jahanbegloo was arrested by the Iranian authorities. On May 3, Iran judiciary branch officials confirmed that he was arrested and sent to Evin Prison. According to some sources, he was accused of spying. The following day, a friend told CBC News that Jahanbegloo had been moved to a hospital.Human Rights Watch expressed concern over Jahanbegloo being detained without charges and called for his immediate release. According to Canadian newspaper reports on May 6, Jahanbegloo's friends suspected that he was being tortured. Their fears increased in the wake of reports that Jahanbegloo had been examined twice at the medical clinic of Evin Prison, a detention facility for political prisoners. An Iranian newspaper, Jomhuri Eslami, accused Jahanbegloo of