Akeel Bilgrami

Akeel Bilgrami (born 1950) is an Indian philosopher who has taught in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University since 1985, after two years as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A secularist and an atheist, he advocates for an understanding of the community-oriented dimension of religion, arguing that spiritual yearnings are understandable and supremely human, and that in the modern world religion is often less a matter of belief and doctrine than of the sense of community and shared values it provides where other forms of solidarity, such as a strong labor movement, are absent. He has served on the Humanities jury for the Infosys Prize since 2012, chairing the jury from 2019.