Robert McDermott is professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.
He received his Ph.D. in 1969 in philosophy from Boston University and is president emeritus of the California Institute of Integral Studies.
With Arthur Zajonc, McDermott is co-founder of The Owen Barfield Graduate School of Sunbridge College, is the founding chair of the board of Sophia Project (two homes in Oakland, California, for mothers and children at risk of homelessness), and has been chair of the board and president of many other institutions.
His essays have appeared in International Philosophical Quarterly, Cross Currents, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Philosophy East and West.
He was the first president in its history who filled out his terms of office without resigning or being dismissed (not counting the founder and first President, the Bengali scholar Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, who expired in his office in 1975 while writing a student, shortly after teaching his last class in Modern Brain Research and Psychodynamics).