Michael Ignatieff was born in Canada in 1947. He received a bachelor's degree in history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College and completed his PhD in history at Harvard University in 1976. He was granted a master's degree from Cambridge University in 1978 after taking up a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge. He then held teaching positions at numerous universities including Oxford, the University of London, the London School of Economics and the University of California. He also worked as a broadcaster on radio and television in England for the BBC.
Between 2006 and 2011, Ignatieff served as a Member of Parliament in the Parliament of Canada and then as the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition. He was a Senior Resident Fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto from 2011 to 2012, and a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto from 2012 to 2013. From 2012 to 2015, he served as Centennial Chair at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. From 2014 to 2016, he was the Edward R. Murrow Chair of the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He served as the Rector and President of Central European University (CEU) in Budapest from 2016 to 2021 and is currently a professor of history at CEU in January, 2022.
Ignatieff is the author of numerous books including The Needs of Strangers published in 1984, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror published in 2004, Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics published in 2013, and The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World published in 2017.
Ignatieff delivered the Beatty Lecture on October 6, 2005, titled 鈥淐anada in the World: The Challenges Ahead鈥�.
Image: Daniel Vegel
