Jeffery D. Long is the Carl W. Zeigler Professor of Religion, Philosophy, and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, where has taught since receiving his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School in the year 2000. He has written numerous books and articles and has also spoken three times at the United Nations, as well as appearing in documentaries for the History Channel and the Public Broadcasting Service. In 2022 he received an award from the International Ahimsa Foundation, in New York, for his efforts to promote nonviolence through his scholarship. That same year, his book, Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds, received the Rajinder and Jyoti Gandhi award for excellence in philosophy, theology, and critical thought from the Dharma Academy of North America. He is an adherent of the Vedanta tradition of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, in which he took diksha (initiation) in the year 2005.