Welcome
I’m delighted that you’ve found your way to this site and I hope you’ll find it useful.
I’ve included the basics about my life and career as a writer, historian, professor and politician. You’ll also find a complete bibliography of my writing and you can download some of my pieces.
I’ll also use this site to announce future projects and appearances and I may even post a comment from time to time. If you’d like to stay in touch, please join the mailing list.
Finally, I’ve also included links so that if you want to buy my books, you can do so.
If you’d like to get in touch with a query or a comment, please click the button provided and I will try to reply as soon as I can.
Interviews
On Consolation: Navigating Dark Times
Michael Ignatieff @ Seize the Moment Podcast
— May 2023
“Academic freedom: threats within and without”
Michael Ignatieff @ Trinity College Dublin
— October 2022
The Historical Perspective of the War in Ukraine
Michael Ignatieff, Professor in the Department of History and former CEU President and Rector (2016 – 2021) discusses the historical context behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
— Mar 17, 2022 @ Central European University
Latest writing
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Not politicians, not sanctions – only the battlefield will determine when the war will be over
“How to end the war” is more than the wrong question. Right now, it’s a malign diversion. Instead of sticking with the Ukrainians, instead of asking them what they need, we’re asking them what they’ll settle for. […] The end of the war will not be decided in Washington or London but in Bakhmut, Zaporizhia and Kherson, in the places where courage, firepower, strategy and tactics will make the difference.
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Epistemological Panic,
or Thinking for YourselfThinking for yourself has never been easy, but the question of whether it is still possible at all is of some moment. The key ideals of liberal democracy—moral independence and intellectual autonomy—depend on it, and my students will not have much experience of either if they end up living in a culture where all of their political and cultural opinions must express tribal allegiance to one of two partisan alternatives; where they live in communities so segregated by education, class, and race that they never encounter a challenge to their tribe’s received ideas, or in a society where the wells of information are so polluted that pretty well everything they read is “fake news”.
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After Paradise
How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of portraits of writers, artists and musicians searching for consolation—from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, and Primo Levi—writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience. Recreating the moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and the determination to continue unafraid, On Consolation takes those stories into the present, contending that we can revive these traditions of consolation to meet the anguish and uncertainties of the twenty-first century.
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A Shared truth
Democracies cannot function without some shared truth: the truth that we should live in peace with each other, that we should try to understand each other as best we can, that we should obey just laws and change unjust ones peacefully; and that we should share the land we love together.
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Democracy and the Legacy of Revolutionary Violence
Once founded in a moment of revolutionary upheaval, democracies must manage their legacy: to ensure that revolutionary violence, sanctioned as a sacred necessity at the beginning, does not legitimize violence when democracy faces a moment of crisis, deadlock or extreme polarization.
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In Praise of a Life Cut Short
Trevor Harrison was emblematic of [that] youthful optimism. In 2006, just out of Queen’s University, he showed up in my office on Parliament Hill.
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A tale of four cities
Russia tried to crush the will of the people in Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 and Warsaw in 1981, and failed each time. Kyiv in 2022 will be the same – the question is how long it will take, and at what cost.
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New book out / November 9, 2021
On Consolation
When we lose someone we love, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes—war, famine, pandemic—we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolation has largely vanished from our modern vocabulary, and the places where it was offered, houses of religion, are often empty. Rejecting the solace of ancient religious texts, humanity since the sixteenth century has increasingly placed its faith in science, ideology, and the therapeutic.
How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of portraits of writers, artists and musicians searching for consolation—from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, and Primo Levi—writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience. Recreating the moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and the determination to continue unafraid, On Consolation takes those stories into the present, contending that we can revive these traditions of consolation to meet the anguish and uncertainties of the twenty-first century.
See excerpt (Introduction: After Paradise) →
Order On Consolation
About Michael Ignatieff
Professor
Michael Ignatieff was until recently the Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest. He stepped down at the end of July 2021, to stay as a Professor in the History Department.
Writer
Michael Ignatieff’s major publications are:
- The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World (2017)
- Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (2013)
- The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (2004)
- Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001)
- The Rights Revolution (2000)
- Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998)
- Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (1995)
- Scar Tissue (1992)
- The Needs of Strangers (1984)
Politician
Between 2006 and 2011, Michael Ignatieff served as an MP in the Parliament of Canada and then as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition. He is a member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and holds thirteen honorary degrees.