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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...