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Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

Michael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician who served as leader of the Liberal Party and leader of the Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. Most recently, he was rector and president of Central European University; he held this position from 2016 to 2021. .. more

Political science 62%

Sociology 16%

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Twilight in Samarkand

'World Heritage" and the Strange Power of Beauty Good new ideas are in short supply these days and bad ideas metastasize hourly on the internet, so it’s the right moment to celebrate a good old idea we need more than ever. The idea I have in mind is ‘world heritage.’ This is the thought that the Parthenon in Greece, the Great Wall of China, the temple at Abu Simbel in Egypt, the Taj Mahal, Jefferson’s…

You don't know what you've got till it's gone

The Joni Mitchell theory of democracy As that wise woman, Joni Mitchell, once sang, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” As a melancholy instance of this, you might not even know what democracy is, or care about it very much, until you see it dismantled before your disbelieving eyes.

Politics Roundup: Richard K. Sherwin thinks Trump is taking aim at the midterms, Michael Ignatieff reviews Lea Ypi’s new book, and more

Also with Joseph E. Stiglitz, Zaki Laïdi, Ana Palacio, and Andrés Velasco Also with Joseph E. Stiglitz, Zaki Laïdi, Ana Palacio, and Andrés Velasco

The Light of the World

Love, Marriage and Food Twenty-six years ago, on a warm September morning in London, Zsuzsanna and I were married at Hackney Town Hall. Our ceremony, barely twenty minutes long, squeezed itself in between a noisy, beautifully attired African couple and a large Indian family wedding where the women’s saris shone like jewels in the sunshine. Zsuzsanna wore a navy dress which she…

Reposts 0 Sep 17

The Empire in our Heads

What if the enemy is us? We are living through the farcical collapse of an American empire that began in Rooseveltian grandeur. As the wreckage piles up around us, non-Americans need to get that empire out of our heads. We once persuaded ourselves that all power resided in the imperial capital and all capacity for action rested with the emperor. We would be safe as long as we d…

Reposts 0 Sep 7

The strong do what they can

And the weak suffer what they must [Thucydides: a Roman copy of a Greek original in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.]

Reposts 0 Aug 20

The Trump Revolution

And why liberalism will survive it [Abbe Sieyes, by Jacques Louis David, Harvard Art Galleries]

Reposts 0 Jul 30

When an old friend dies

You have questions When a close friend dies you ask questions you don’t usually think about. Questions like, what does it mean to have a happy life? A successful one? You ask, did he have one ? Do you?

Reposts 0 Jul 15

Lament for a Nation

Can Canada survive? On Canada Day, with negotiations between Canada and the US on our future relationship hanging in the balance, it’s a good moment to look back at the history of Canada’s long struggle to balance national independence and economic integration with her stronger neighbor to the south. I begin the story in 1965 when an unknown academic raised the question of…

Reposts 0 Jul 1

The Pathos of Power

What B2's Cannot Achieve The B2 Stealth bomber is as potent a symbol of a country’s power as any President could wish for. Last week, it flew 18 hours from Missouri, dropped the world’s deadliest non-nuclear munitions on the Iranian nuclear sites and returned home, with Iranian air defence unable to fire a shot in reply. The B 2’s success had immediate effects. Iran quickly acc…

Reposts 0 Jun 26

When a great artist dies

We lose a path to know ourselves The pianist Alfred Brendel died on Tuesday morning in London at the age of 94. We had visited him just weeks before. He was in pain, but still laughed, suffered but still listened, and was happy to see us as we were to see him.

Reposts 0 Jun 19

The Cost of Nostalgia

Remembering Israel in 1967 In times like these, where the present feels like it’s on fire, and the future is shrouded in smoke, we often take refuge in nostalgia. The past at least has a shape, and that makes it a more comfortable place to dwell than in a menacing present where so much seems at risk.

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First they come for the universities

And then they come for democracy The Trump Administration’s attack on Harvard and on higher education is the most serious assault on academic freedom in American history. Nothing compares to it, not the clampdown on academic speech during World War I, not Senator McCarthy’s harassment of professors in the 1950’s. The President has annulled the university’s right to accept foreign stude…

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