Mehta is the former Vice Chancellor (and co-founder) of Ashoka University in Delhi, a position he was pressured to abandon because of his public dissent from policies of the Modi government. He is a political theorist and a columnist who is as prominent and as recognizable in India as Thomas Friedman is in the United States. He is presently teaching at Princeton University. The event is co-sponsored by Rocky, the Dickey Center, and the Dartmouth Political Union as part of its "Democracy Summit" series.

It is being live streamed here.