Michael Bonner studied classical and oriental languages at the University of Toronto, and took his MPhil in 2010 and DPhil in 2015 in the history of late-antique Iran and early Islam from the University of Oxford. Michael’s academic work took him to East Jerusalem, Damascus and Kabul, and he has lived and worked in Paris and Geneva as a consultant also, but politics has always been his main vocation. After his doctorate, he returned to Canada where he served as policy advisor to five ministers in seven portfolios over the course of a decade in both federal and provincial governments. He continues to publish on Iranian history for a mostly academic audience, and his political commentary has appeared in the National Post, Toronto Sun, The Hub, City Journal, the Epoch Times and elsewhere. He is a Senior Fellow of the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and a Contributing Editor at the Dorchester Review. He is the author In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present, and lives in Port Perry, Ontario, with his wife and three children.