Michael Ignatieff is president and rector at the Central European University (CEU). Prior to CEU, he was Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.
He is a university professor, writer and former politician. He holds a doctorate in history from Harvard University and has held academic posts at the University of British Columbia, Cambridge University, the University of Toronto, the London School of Economics and Harvard University, where he was director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy between 2000 and 2005.
His major publications are The Needs of Strangers (1984), Scar Tissue (1992), 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).
Between 2006 and 2011, he 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 eleven honorary degrees.
He also currently serves as Centennial Chair at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York.
