Human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff is coming home to Canada. After spending most of his career in the United States and the UK, Ignatieff, 48, is leaving his post as Director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University to fill the equally prestigious role of Chancellor Jackman Visiting Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto.
Ignatieff, will be a fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies, advising graduate students and teaching an undergraduate political science course on human rights and intervention, as well as delivering a series of public lectures. Janice Stein, a fellow at the Munk Centre, had nothing but praise for Ignatieff: “He will bring to the Munk Centre a critical mind, an unwillingness to accept conventional wisdom… [and] a deep appreciation of the complexities that we live with.”
The Toronto born academic and writer is internationally known for his books on human rights, terrorism and international politics. One of his recent books, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in Age of Terror, explored the relationship between combatting terrorism and human rights in democratic societies. Ignatieff is also a frequent contributor to newspapers such as the New York Times. In addition, Ignatieff has worked for the BBC and worked as a journalist in Rwanda and Kosovo. His 1988 book, The Russian Album, won the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction. Several Canadian newspapers have been rife with speculation about whether Ignatieff might pursue a political career. The academic is widely admired in Liberal party circles and is known to have campaigned for the Liberals when he was growing up in Canada. However, he only came third in an Angus-Reid poll of who voters see as Prime Minister Martin’s successor.
Ignatieff has a bachelor’s and honorary doctor of sacred letters degrees from the University of Toronto and a doctorate from Harvard. He is the son of former Trinity College provost and Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff, who also served as the Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and served of chancellor of U of T from 1980 to 1986.