Michael Ignatieff

Carnegie-Uehiro Centennial Chair; Central European University

Michael Ignatieff is a Canadian writer, teacher, and former politician. He is president and rector of Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Previously, Ignatieff was Edward R. Murrow Professor of the Practice of the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He also served in the Parliament of Canada and was leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

His books include The Needs of Strangers (1984), Scar Tissue (1992), Blood and Belonging, (1993), The Warrior's Honour (1997), Isaiah Berlin (1998), The Rights Revolution (2000), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001), The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (2004), and Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (2013).

He was the Carnegie-Uehiro Centennial Chair for Carnegie Council's 2014 Centennial. For more on the Council's Centennial projects, click here.

Featured Work

APR 22, 2019 Podcast

Human Rights, Liberalism, & Ordinary Virtues, with Michael Ignatieff

Central European University's President Michael Ignatieff is a human rights scholar, an educator, a former politician, and, as he tells us, the son of a ...

SEP 29, 2017 Podcast

The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World

To mark Carnegie Council's Centennial, Michael Ignatieff and team set out to discover what moral values people hold in common across nations. What he found ...

NOV 20, 2014 Podcast

Michael Ignatieff in Conversation with Paul Holdengräber at the NYPL

Carnegie Council Centennial Chairman Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian writer, teacher, and former politician, discusses his life, his work, and the Council's Centennial project, Ethics for ...

Michael Ignatieff, Joel Rosenthal, George Rupp, Mustafa Cerić, Adam Roberts, David Rodin, and Ivo Banac (L to R). <br>CREDIT: Irfan Redzovic

SEP 3, 2014 Podcast

Sarajevo Panel Discussion

In this wide-ranging conversation, participants from the Sarajevo Symposium discuss the past, present, and future of the former Yugoslav states with a focus on Bosnia ...

SEP 3, 2014 Podcast

Sarajevo Symposium, Closing Remarks

"We have all got to live with each other. There will be Serbs here in a thousand years, Croats here in a thousand years. We're ...

CREDIT: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jvoves/4569871721">Joseph Voves</a> (<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en">CC</a>).

JAN 31, 2014 Article

The Moral Operating System of a Global City: Los Angeles

For global cities to solve the central problem of collaboration among strangers, they need a moral operating system: shared codes and behaviors that enable people ...

NOV 21, 2013 Podcast

Symposium at the Scottish Parliament: From War to a Global Ethic

Is it possible to create a global code of ethics? In this Carnegie Council Centennial Symposium at the Scottish Parliament, the panelists discuss Andrew Carnegie's ...

JUN 27, 2013 Transcript

The Ethics of Globalization and the Globalization of Ethics

In this rousing and eloquent speech in Rio, given during the biggest protests there in 25 years, Michael Ignatieff salutes the protesters' "patriotic anger" and discusses ...

Left: Devin Stewart and Michael Ignatieff, University of Buenos Aires, June 2013

JUN 12, 2013 Article

Global Ethical Dialogues: Concept Paper

How can Carnegie Council, an organization with a global mandate but based in New York, contribute to generating egalitarian dialogue within and between unequal societies? ...

NOV 21, 2011 Podcast

Re-Imagining a Global Ethic

"A global ethic makes it possible for us to agree to disagree about ultimate questions, provided we have the philosophical clarity that comes from that ...