Michael Ignatieff
In 2008, Michael Ignatieff assumed the role of Leader of the Opposition in Canada, a position he would hold until 2011 — a public turn that marked one of several transitions between academic, literary, and political life across a long career.
Born in Toronto in 1947, Ignatieff was educated at Upper Canada College before going on to study at the University of Toronto's Trinity College, the University of Oxford, and Harvard University. Working across English in multiple capacities — as a writer, journalist, novelist, philosopher, historian, and screenwriter — he built a career that moved between the humanities and public affairs. He held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto, and later served as rector and president of Central European University from 2016 to 2021.
As a politician, Ignatieff served as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada alongside his tenure as Leader of the Opposition. His range of work across scholarly and public domains brought him a number of significant recognitions: he received the Hannah Arendt Prize, the Dan David Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.
His receipt of the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences stands as a concrete marker of the international reach of his contributions across writing, political thought, and academic life.
Quotes by Michael Ignatieff
Michael Ignatieff's insights on:
An intellectual may be interested in ideas and policies for their own sake, but a politician's interest is exclusively in the question of whether an idea's time has come.
The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions - and Iraq may be one of them - when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror.
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
I had a feeling of shame about my grief, as if I was making false amends for the bitterness I felt towards him when he was alive.
Because we remain a land of hope and opportunity, and new Canadians see in our unfinished destiny an image of their own unfinished destines.
The medium’s gaze is brief, intense, and promiscuous. The shelf life of the moral causes it makes its own is brutally short.
