Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff (born May 12, 1947, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian author, literary critic, and politician who represented the Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding in the Canadian House of Commons (2006–11) and who served as leader of the Liberal Party (2008–11).

Ignatieff’s paternal grandparents were Russian nobles who fled to Canada in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Shortly after Ignatieff’s birth, his family moved to New York City, where his father served as Canada’s representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Having spent much of his childhood living abroad as a result of his father’s diplomatic service in various countries, Ignatieff returned to Canada in 1959 to attend Upper Canada College, a prestigious boarding school in Toronto. After graduating with a host of academic and athletic honours, he entered the University of Toronto’s Trinity College in 1965. It was there that he gained his first political experience, canvassing for Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1965 and working as national youth director for Pierre Trudeau in 1968. Ignatieff graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Trinity in 1969, and he pursued graduate studies at Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in 1976. That year he accepted his first teaching position, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

In 1978 Ignatieff accepted a fellowship at the University of Cambridge. That year he also published his first book, A Just Measure of Pain, an examination of England’s prison system. While at Cambridge, Ignatieff and a group of fellow liberal intellectuals created the History Workshop, a discussion forum for history, philosophy, and the arts. The connections he made there inspired him to leave academia and embark on a career as a writer; he quickly published two additional books, Wealth and Virtue (1983) and The Needs of Strangers (1984), and his name regularly appeared in the byline of major newspaper and magazine articles. His family figured prominently in his writing, initially in short magazine pieces and later in The Russian Album (1987), a critically acclaimed family biography that covered five generations. Ignatieff next experimented with fiction, beginning with Aysa (1991), the story of a Russian expatriate during World War II, and Scar Tissue (1993), a semi-autobiographical tale of a man caring for his dying mother. The latter book was nominated for numerous literary awards, and it appeared on the short list for the Booker Prize in 1993. Ignatieff was a fixture on television, regularly appearing on both sides of the interviewer’s microphone and producing documentaries for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and he returned to academia as a visiting professor at a series of universities.

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By the late 1990s Ignatieff was firmly established as a member of the global intellectual elite. His 1998 biography of Isaiah Berlin won accolades, and he was increasingly outspoken on matters of international policy—particularly about the moral dilemma of using military force to preserve human rights. His writings in this period focused almost exclusively on matters of global security, and Ignatieff was tapped in 2001 to head the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. He broke with much of the liberal establishment in 2003 when he voiced his support for the Iraq War, but he cautioned against the triumphalism that could arise as the result of a military victory.

In 2005 Ignatieff left Harvard and returned to Canada, ostensibly to take a visiting professor post at the University of Toronto. It was clear from a relatively early date, however, that he intended to campaign for a seat in the Canadian Parliament. Over the next year his star quickly rose within the Liberal Party, and he coasted to a relatively easy victory in the Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding in western Toronto. The federal election was an overall loss for the Liberals, and Conservative Stephen Harper led a minority government in Ottawa. The next two years saw the Liberals without clear direction, and the party fared poorly in the federal election of 2008. Ignatieff provided one of the bright spots for the party, however, easily winning his riding and emerging as a credible candidate for party leadership. When Liberal leader Stéphane Dion stepped down in December 2008, Ignatieff was named interim leader of the party—a position that was made official at the party’s convention on May 2, 2009.

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Ignatieff tried to orient the party in a more fiscally conservative direction while preserving social programs that had been the hallmark of the Liberal tenure in the majority. As Canada was largely spared the hardships of the global financial crisis, however, Conservatives retained the momentum on economic issues. In March 2011 a parliamentary committee found the Conservatives in contempt for failing to release budgetary information, and Ignatieff sponsored a no-confidence vote that brought down the Harper government. During the ensuing election campaign, the Conservatives continued to drive the debate on the economy, and Ignatieff had to expend much of his effort on parrying a challenge from the New Democratic Party (NDP), which surged in the polls, particularly in Quebec. In the federal election, held on May 2, 2011, the Liberals had their worst electoral showing in party history, finishing a distant third behind the Conservatives and the NDP. Ignatieff lost his own seat, and he resigned as Liberal Party leader the following day.

Ignatieff later returned to Harvard. From 2016 to 2021 he was president and rector of Central European University.

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