Bhikhu Parekh
Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh
Educated at the Universities of Bombay and London, Bhikhu Parekh is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Academy of the Learned Societies for Social Sciences. Professor Parekh is a member of the House of Lords. He was chair of the Runnymede Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (1998-2000), whose report, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, was published in 2000. He is vice-chairman of the Gandhi Foundation, a trustee of the Anne Frank Educational Trust, and a member of the National Commission on Equal Opportunity. His main academic interests include political philosophy, the history of political thought, social theory, ancient and modern Indian political thought, and the philosophy of ethnic relations. He is the author of Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (2000); Gandhi (2001); Colonialism, Tradition and Reform (1999); Gandhi´s Political Philosophy (1989); Contemporary Political Thinkers (1982); Karl Marx´s Theory of Ideology (1981); and Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (1981). He has also edited four volumes of Critical Assessments of Jeremy Bentham.
Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh is the Centennial Professor in the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the LSE and emeritus professor of political theory at the University of Hull, has held visiting professorships at the universities of British Columbia, Concordia, McGill, Harvard, Pompeau Febra, Pennsylvania and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna. He was vice-chancellor of the University of Baroda from 1981-84.
A frequent broadcaster on radio and TV, he has written for the national press on race relations and political events in Britain. He was chair of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, whose report was published in October 2000. Professor Parekh was elected British Asian of the Year in 1992, was awarded the BBC´s prestigious Special Lifetime Achievement Award for Asians in November 1999 and was appointed to the House of Lords in March 2000.
His many books include: Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (1981), Marx´s Theory of Ideology (1982), and, most recently, Rethinking Multiculturalism (2000) and Gandhi (2001). As well as serving on many public bodies, Professor Parekh is a trustee of, among others, the Runnymede Trust, the Institute of Public Policy Research, and the Anne Frank Educational Trust.