Ignatieff is the son of Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff and Alison Grant, and the grandson of Count Paul Ignatieff, who was the Tsar's last Minister of Education and one of the few Tsarist ministers who escaped execution by the Bolsheviks. His Canadian antecedents include his maternal great grandfather, George Monro Grant, the dynamic 19th century principal of Queen's University. His mother's younger brother was the political philosopher George Grant (1918-1988), author of Lament for a Nation. His great-grandfather was Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, the Russian Minister of the Interior under Tsar Alexander III. In his book called The Russian Album, Ignatieff explores the importance of memory and obligation to ancestry in the context of his own family's history. Ignatieff is fluent in both English and French, and has a basic knowledge of Russian, the native language of his father.
Michael Ignatieff grew up in Toronto, attending Upper Canada College. As a high school student, he worked for Lester B. Pearson, canvassing the York South riding for the 1965 election. He continued his work for the Liberal Party in 1968, as a national youth organizer and party delegate for the Pierre Elliot Trudeau campaign.
After high school, Ignatieff studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College. There, he met fellow student (and future Premier of Ontario) Bob Rae, who became a friend. After completing his undergraduate degree, Ignatieff took up his studies at Oxford University, where he studied under the well-known historian and philosopher Isaiah Berlin, and about whom he would later write. From 1964 to 1965, Ignatieff worked as a journalist at The Globe and Mail newspaper.
While living in the United Kingdom, Ignatieff became well known as a broadcaster on radio and television. His best known television work was as presenter on 'Voices' on Channel 4, on a BBC 2 discussion programme called "Thinking Aloud" and on BBC 2's arts programme, The Late Show. His documentary series Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism aired on BBC in 1993. He was also an editorial columnist for The Observer from 1990 to 1993.
Ignatieff is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzanna M Zsohar and has two children, Theo and Sophie, from his first marriage to Londoner Susan Barrowclough, with whom they still reside.
Michael Ignatieff is an internationally recognized scholar and historian, and has written extensively on the subjects of international relations and nation-building. He has published 16 fiction and non-fiction books, which have been translated into 12 languages. Additionally, he has contributed numerous articles to newspapers such as The Globe and Mail and The New York Times Magazine. Maclean's named him among the "Top 10 Canadian Who's Who" in 1997 and among the "50 Most Influential Canadians Shaping Society" in 2002. In 2003, Maclean's named him Canada's "Sexiest Cerebral Man".
Ignatieff's memoir of his family's experiences in nineteenth-century Russia (and subsequent exile), The Russian Album, won the the Canadian 1987 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize. His 1998 biography of Isaiah Berlin was shortlisted for both the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
His text on Western interventionist policies and nation building, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, studied the NATO bombing of Kosovo and subsequent aftermath. It won the Orwell Prize for political non-fiction in 2000. He also worked with the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in preparing the report, The Responsibility to Protect, which discussed the role of international involvement in Kosovo, Rwanda, and the Darfur region of Sudan.
In addition, his book on the dangers of ethnic nationalism in the Post-Cold war period, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the University of Toronto's Lionel Gelber Prize.Blood and Belonging was based on Ignatieff's Gemini Award winning 1993 television series of the same name.
Michael Igantieff also delivered the Massey Lectures in 2000. Entitled The Rights Revolution, the series was released in print later that year. In 2004, Michael published The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, a philosophical work analyzing human rights in the post-9/11 world. It was also a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize, and attracted consiberable attention for its attempts to reconcile the democratic ideals of western liberal societies with the often coercive nature of the War on Terrorism.
Ignatieff also writes fiction; one of his novels, Scar Tissue, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. In addition to writing, he has also been a participant and panel leader at the World Economic Forum in Geneva.
Ignatieff has been described as "an extraordinarily versatile writer", in both the style and the subjects he writes about. Indeed, his fictional works, Asya, Scar Tissue, and Charlie Johnson in the Flames cover the life and travels of a Russian girl, the disintigration of one's mother to neurological disease, and the haunting memories of a journalist in Kosovo, respectively. In all three works, however, one sees elements of Ignatieff's own life coming through. For instance, Michael Ignatieff travelled to the Balkans and Kurdistan while working as a journalist, witnessing first hand the attrocities in each. Similarly, his historical novel, The Russian Album traced his family's life in Russia and subsequent exodus.
In addition to The Russian Album, Ignatieff's historical novels include a description of prisons during the Industrial Revolution, called A Just Measure of Pain, and a biography of celebrated philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who made a strong impression on Ignatieff. Ignatieff's own philosophical writings include The Needs of Strangers and The Rights Revolution, where he explores social welfare and community, and show the influence of Berlin on Ignatieff. These tie closely to Ignatieff's political writings, as well, such as those on national self-determination and the imperatives of democratic self-government. Ignatieff has also written extensively on international affairs.
Blood and Belonging, a 1993 work, explores the duality of nationalism, from Yugoslavia to Northern Ireland. It is the first of a trilogy of books which exploring modern conflict. The Warrior's Honour, published in 1998, deals with ethnically-motivated conflicts, including the conflicts in Afghanistan and Rwanda. The final book, Virtual War, describes the problems of modern peacekeeping, with special reference to the NATO presence in Kosovo.
More of Ignatieff's ideas can be found below.
Canadian culture and human rights
In The Rights Revolution, Ignatieff identifies three aspects of Canada's approach to human rights that give the country its distinctive culture. Firstly, on moral issues, Canadian law is secular and liberal, approximating European standards more closely than American ones. Secondly, Canadian political culture is socially democratic; Canadians take it for granted that citizens have the right to free health care and public assistance. Thirdly, Canadians place a particular emphasis on group rights, expressed in Quebec's language laws and in treaty agreements that recognise collective aboriginal rights. "Apart from New Zealand, no other country has given such recognition to the idea of group rights," he writes.
Despite its admirable commitment to equality and group rights, Canadian society still places an unjust burden on women and gays and lesbians, Ignatieff argues, and it is still difficult for newcomers (particularly of non-British descent) to form an enduring sense of citizenship. Ignatieff attributes this to the "patch-work quilt of distinctive societies," emphasizing that civic bonds will only be easier when the understanding of Canada as a multinational community is more widely shared.
International affairs
Ignatieff has written extensively on the subject of international development, peacekeeping, and the international responsibilities of Western nations. Critical of the limited-risk approach practiced by NATO in conflicts like the Kosovo War and the Rwandan Genocide, he has argued for a more active involvement and larger scale deployment of land forces by Western nations in future conflicts in the developing world.
In this vein, Ignatieff was a prominent supporter of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, a position that was controversial among Liberals.http://www.novak.com/weblog/stories/2004/03/17/michaelIgnatieffOnIraq.html He argued that America had inadvertently established "an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known." The burden of that empire obliged America to expend itself unseating Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the interests of international security and human rights. Containment through sanctions and threats would not prevent Hussein from selling weapons of mass destruction to international terrorists, Ignatieff asserted, erroneously believing those weapons were still being developed in Iraq.http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/burden.htm Moreover, according to Ignatieff, "what Saddam Hussein had done to the Kurds and the Shia" in Iraq was sufficient justification for the invasion.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060330.wignatiefftext0330/BNStory/Front/?&pageRequested=all&print=truehttp://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/AS_IT_HAPPENS/20060407.shtml
In the years following the invasion, Ignatieff has reiterated his support for the war's aims, if not the method in which it was conducted. "I supported an administration whose intentions I didn't trust," he averred, "believing that the consequences would repay the gamble. Now I realize that intentions do shape consequences."
The lesser evil approach
More controversially, Ignatieff has written several newspaper articles about the threat of terrorism. In the pieces, Ignatieff argued that governments might need to take a "lesser evil" approach that finds a middle ground between adhering to the rule of law and sanctioning coercion. The central question of this approach is how far the state can justify using coercive, undemocratic measures to secure a free and democratic society, and conversely, at what point those measures themselves become as offensive to freedom and democracy as the threats they seek to prevent.
Ignatieff attempts to balance citizens' rights to privacy and civil liberties against the state's need for surveillance to investigate terrorist activities. In the of context this "lesser evil" analysis, Ignatieff discusses whether liberal democracies should employ coercive interrogation and torture. His highly nuanced position has generated significant controversy.
Critics of Ignatieff question his commitment to Canada, pointing out that Ignatieff has lived outside of Canada for more than 30 years. He has also come under fire for writing editorials from the perspective of an American, and, when writing for The Observer in the early 1990s, as an Englishman.. In these articles, Ignatieff used the words "we" or "us" in reference to the US or Britain, implying an identification with those countries. He has also expressed admiration for those countries, such as in his 2002 Granta article [1] describing the comraderie at an American Vietnam war protest.
Ignatieff was questioned about his close identification with America by Peter Newman in a Macleans'sinterview published on April 62006. He apologised for referring to himself as an American and said, "Sometimes you want to increase your influence over your audience by appropriating their voice, but it was a mistake. Every single one of the students from 85 countries who took my courses at Harvard knew one thing about me: I was that funny Canadian."
Ballistic missile defense
Also controversial for many Liberals is Ignatieff's support for a ground-based North American Missile Defence Shield.http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v16n4p26.htm While admitting that opposition to the proposed shield is a popular position among many Liberals, Ignatieff has proclaimed the need for a principled commitment to coordinated North American defence. "We don't want our decisions to fracture the command system of North American defence," he told the party at a national policy conference.http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/ksgnews/Features/opeds/030405_ignatieff.htm
Criticism of the lesser evil approach
Ignatieff's views on human rights in the war on terror have attacted considerable attention. Indeed, several commentators have condemned Ignatieff's post-9/11 writings as furthering an anti-human rights agenda.Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the London School of Economics, characterised intellectuals like Ignatieff as "apologists for human rights abuses" who provided United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "the intellectual tools with which to justify his government's expansionism," http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2005/1/international-legitimising-torture-with-a-li.shtml, while Mariano Aguirre, co-director of the Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior in Madrid, wrote that Ignatieff "mixes history and propaganda" by ignoring historical precedents regarding US government human rights abuses.
Michael Ignatieff speaking to citizens in the riding of Etobicokeâ€"Lakeshore, at Assembly Hall in Etobicoke, 18 January2006.
In January 2005, speculation began in the press that Ignatieff could be a star candidate for the Liberals in the next election, and some suggested he could be an ideal candidate to succeed Paul Martin, then the leader of the governing Liberal Party of Canada.
After months of rumours and repeated denials, Ignatieff confirmed in November 2005 that he intended to run for a seat in the House of Commons in the winter 2006 election. It was announced that Ignatieff would seek the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of Etobicokeâ€"Lakeshore. Jean Augustine, the well-liked, long-serving Liberal MP of that riding, stepped aside and endorsed Ignatieff's nomination.
Some Ukrainian-Canadian members of the riding association objected to the nomination, citing a perceived anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Blood and Belonging, where Ignatieff discusses Russian stereotypes of Ukrainians. Two other candidates filed for the nomination but were disqualified (one, because he was not a member of the party and the second because he had failed to resign from his position on the riding association executive). The two appealed Ignatieff's acclamation, but without success. Ignatieff went on to defeat the Conservative candidate by a margin of roughly 5,000 votes to win the seat.Elections Canada: 2006 Federal Elections Results
Leadership bid
After the Liberal government was defeated in the January, 2006 federal election, Paul Martin resigned from party leadership. On April 7, 2006, Michael Ignatieff announced his candidacy in the upcoming Liberal leadership race, joining several others who had already declared their candidacy.
Since his election to Parliament, Ignatieff has been notable among the oppposition members for supporting the minority Conservative government's commitment to Canadian military acitivity in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called a vote in the House of Commons for May 17, 2006 on extending the Canadian Forces current deployment in Afghanistan until February 2009. During the debate, Ignatieff expressed his "unequivocal support for the troops in Afghanistan, for the mission, and also for the renewal of the mission." He argued that the Afghanistan mission tests the success of Canada's shift from "the peacekeeping paradigm to the peace-enforcement paradigm," the latter combining "military, reconstruction and humanitarian efforts together."http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060519.AFGHANLIBS19/TPStory/Nationalhttp://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060517/nato_afghan_060517/20060517?hub=CTVNewsAt11
The opposition Liberal caucus of 102 MPs was divided, with 24 MPs supporting the extension, 66 voting against, and 12 abstentions. Among Liberal leadership candidates, Ignatieff and Scott Brison, voted for the extension. Ignatieff led the largest Liberal contingent of votes in favour, with at least five of his caucus supporters voting along with him to extend the mission.http://www.hilltimes.com/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=/2006/may/22/afghan/&c=1 Following the vote, Harper crossed the floor to shake Ignatieff's hand.http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=07a874aa-4e70-488e-b622-ab611d640a09&k=26718
In a subsequent campaign appearance, Ignatieff reiterated his view of the mission in Afghanistan, stating "the thing that Canadians have to understand about Afghanistan is that we are well past the era of Pearsonian peacekeeping."http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/National/2006/05/20/1589327-sun.html
Asya, 1991 Scar Tissue, 1993 Charlie Johnson in the Flames, 2005
Non-Fiction
A Just Measure of Pain: Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1850, 1978 The Needs of Strangers, 1984 The Russian Album, 1987 Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism, 1994 Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, 1997 Isaiah Berlin: A Life, 1998 Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, 2000 The Rights Revolution, Viking, 2000 Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Anansi Press Ltd, 2001 Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, Minerva, 2003 The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, 2004 American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (ed.), Princeton University Press, 2005.
Recent Articles
The Broken Contract, The New York Times Magazine, September 25, 2005. Iranian Lessons, The New York Times Magazine, July 17, 2005. Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?, The New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2005. The Uncommitted, The New York Times Magazine, January 30, 2005. The Terrorist as Auteur, The New York Times Magazine, November 14, 2004. Mirage in the Desert, The New York Times Magazine, 27 June 2004. Could We Lose the War on Terror?: Lesser Evils, (cover story), The New York Times Magazine, 2 May 2004. The Year of Living Dangerously, The New York Times Magazine, 14 March 2004. Arms and the Inspector, Los Angeles Times, 14 March 2004. Peace, Order and Good Government: A Foreign Policy Agenda for Canada, OD Skelton Lecture, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa, March 12, 2004. Why America Must Know Its Limits, Financial Times, 24 December 2003. A Mess of Intervention. Peacekeeping. Pre-emption. Liberation. Revenge. When should we send in the Troops?, The New York Times Magazine [cover story], 7 September 2003. I am Iraq, The New York Times Magazine, 31 March 2003 [Reprinted in the The Guardian and The National Post]. American Empire: The Burden, (cover story), The New York Times Magazine, 5 January 2003. *Acceptance Speech from the 2003 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking Mission Impossible?, A Review of A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, by David Rieff (Simon and Schuster, 2002), Printed in The New York Review of Books, 19 December 2002. When a Bridge Is Not a Bridge, New York Times Magazine, 27 October 2002. The Divided West, The Financial Times, 31 August 2002. Nation Building Lite, (cover story) The New York Times Magazine, 28 July 2002. The Rights Stuff, New York Times of Books, 13 June 2002. No Exceptions?, Legal Affairs, May/June 2002. Why Bush Must Send in His Troops, The Guardian, 19 April 2002. Barbarians at the Gates?, The New York Times Book Review, 18 February 2002. Is the Human Rights Era Ending?, New York Times, 5 February 2002. Intervention and State Failure, Dissent, Winter 2002. Kaboul-Sarajevo: Les nouvelles frontiers de l'empire, Seuil, 2002.
