Michael Ignatieff https://michaelignatieff.ca/ Professor, writer, politician Wed, 22 Jan 2025 10:59:37 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://i0.wp.com/michaelignatieff.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-Michael-Ignatieff-website-icon-512x512px.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Michael Ignatieff https://michaelignatieff.ca/ 32 32 217957751 Canada, Trump and the new world order https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2025/canada-trump-and-the-new-world-order/ Sat, 18 Jan 2025 09:51:05 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2912 The Trump presidency signals shifts in US-Canada relations and the global order, challenging Canadian sovereignty amid America's hemispheric strategy.

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]]> 2912 The Adults in the Room: Cold War Liberalism Revisited https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2025/the-adults-in-the-room-cold-war-liberalism-revisited/ Mon, 13 Jan 2025 10:44:27 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2937 A personal journey through North American liberalism, from inherited family values to political evolution, examining liberal identity and challenges in modern democracy.

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]]> 2937 The History of My Privileges https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2024/the-history-of-my-privileges/ Sun, 14 Apr 2024 09:20:39 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2595 We cannot help thinking of our own lives as uniquely our own, but if we look more closely, we begin to see how much we shared with strangers of our own age and situation. If we could forget for a moment what was singular about our lives and concentrate instead on what we experienced with everyone else, would it be possible to see ourselves in a new light, less self-dramatizing but possibly more truthful?

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]]> 2595 Universal Values at Bay https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2023/universal-values-at-bay/ Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:38:13 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2584 The moral universalism enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights obliges us to recognize the humanity of others and the reality of their suffering. If that doctrine sounds naive in today’s world, it is because we have allowed malignant spoilers to smother this foundational intuition.

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]]> 2584 Isaiah Berlin – The promise of freedom https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2023/isaiah-berlin-the-promise-of-freedom/ Fri, 28 Jul 2023 08:27:25 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2515 Berlin would have warned us against hubris and intolerance, but also against fatalism. In the battle to come, history is on no one’s side. The outcome of this struggle over who owns the meaning of freedom will come down, as it always does, to the eternal question that decides history’s shape: who is prepared to fight hardest for what they believe.

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]]> 2515 Epistemological Panic, or Thinking for Yourself https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2023/epistemological-panic-or-thinking-for-yourself/ Wed, 04 Jan 2023 08:50:18 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2487 Thinking 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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]]> 2487 The Politics of Enemies https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2022/the-politics-of-enemies/ Mon, 17 Oct 2022 13:18:03 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2457 There are simply no guarantees of democratic order. There is only the inherited belief that violence can kill democracy and that violence endangers everyone, especially those who would use it to defend democracy itself.

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]]> 2457 After Paradise https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2022/after-paradise/ Thu, 13 Oct 2022 05:51:49 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2397 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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]]> 2397 A Shared truth https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2022/a-shared-truth/ Thu, 13 Oct 2022 05:50:27 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2368 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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]]> 2368 Democracy and the Legacy of Revolutionary Violence https://michaelignatieff.ca/article/2022/democracy-and-the-legacy-of-revolutionary-violence/ Thu, 13 Oct 2022 05:49:00 +0000 https://michaelignatieff.ca/?p=2363 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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