Michael Ignatieff
Professor
History
Central European University
Hungary
Biography
Michael Ignatieff is President and Rector of CEU. Ignatieff comes to CEU after serving as Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice of the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. An international commentator on contemporary issues of democracy, human rights, and governance and a Canadian citizen, Ignatieff is also an award-winning writer, teacher, former politician, and historian with a deep knowledge of Central and Eastern Europe. Ignatieff received his doctorate in history from Harvard University and has held academic posts at Kings College, Cambridge, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. He served in the Canadian Parliament and was Leader of the Liberal Party. 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).
Research Interest
Politics, and Public Policy.
Publications
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“Better to forget and move on,†The Sunday Times, April 10, 2016. Review of David Rieff’s “In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies.â€
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Stalin’s Man in Mayfair,†The New York Review of Book, May 12, 2016. Review of Gabriel Gorodetsky’s “The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, 1932-1943.
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Review of “The Discovery of Chance: The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen†by Aileen Kelly, New York Times, May 20, 2016.
