Michael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011.
68 Facts About Michael Ignatieff
2.
Michael Ignatieff served as the party's deputy leader under Dion.
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Michael Ignatieff subsequently resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, and in effect retired from active politics, in May 2011.
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Michael Ignatieff continues to publish articles and essays on international affairs as well as Canadian politics.
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Michael Ignatieff was born on May 12,1947, in Toronto, the elder son of Russian-born Canadian Rhodes Scholar and diplomat George Michael Ignatieff, and his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison.
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Michael Ignatieff's family moved abroad frequently in his early childhood as his father rose in the diplomatic ranks.
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At the age of 11, Michael Ignatieff was sent back to Toronto to attend Upper Canada College as a boarder in 1959.
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Michael Ignatieff resumed his work for the Liberal Party in 1968, as a national youth organizer and delegate for Pierre Trudeau's leadership campaign.
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Michael Ignatieff's great-aunt Alice Parkin Massey was the wife of Canada's first native-born Governor General, Vincent Massey.
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Michael Ignatieff is a descendant of William Lawson, the first president of the Bank of Nova Scotia.
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Michael Ignatieff has a younger brother, Andrew, a community worker who assisted with Ignatieff's campaign.
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Michael Ignatieff describes himself as neither an atheist nor a "believer".
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Michael Ignatieff was an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia from 1976 to 1978.
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Michael Ignatieff then left Cambridge for London, where he began to focus on his career as a writer and journalist.
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Michael Ignatieff continued to lecture at universities in Europe and North America, and held teaching posts at Oxford, the University of London, the London School of Economics, the University of California and in France.
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Michael Ignatieff was an editorial columnist for The Observer from 1990 to 1993.
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Michael Ignatieff later adapted this series into a book, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, detailing the dangers of ethnic nationalism in the post-Cold War period.
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Michael Ignatieff wrote the novel, Scar Tissue, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.
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In 2000, Michael Ignatieff accepted a position as the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University.
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Michael Ignatieff delivered the Massey Lectures in 2000, entitled The Rights Revolution, which was released in print later that year.
21.
Michael Ignatieff wrongly believed that those weapons were still being developed in Iraq.
22.
In 2005, he was criticized by his peers on the editorial board for the Index on Censorship, where human rights advocate Conor Gearty said Michael Ignatieff fell into a category of "hand-wringing, apologetic apologists for human-rights abuses".
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Michael Ignatieff responded by resigning from the editorial board for the Index, and has maintained that he supports a complete ban on torture.
24.
Around 2005, Michael Ignatieff became more frequently mentioned as a possible Liberal candidate for the next federal election, and rumours swirled about the beginnings of a political career.
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Michael Ignatieff continued to write about the subject of Iraq, reiterating his support, if not the method in which it was conducted.
26.
In mid-2011, following his electoral defeat, Michael Ignatieff became a senior resident with the University of Toronto's Massey College, where he taught courses in law and political science for the Munk School of Global Affairs, the School of Public Policy and Governance, and the Faculty of Law.
27.
In January 2013, Michael Ignatieff rejoined the Harvard Kennedy School and divided his time between Toronto and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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The next year, Ignatieff returned to Harvard full-time, and left the University of Toronto, to become Edward R Murrow Chair of Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School effective July 1,2014.
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On May 5,2016, it was announced that Michael Ignatieff would succeed John Shattuck to become the fifth president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
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Michael Ignatieff oversaw a tumultuous period in the university's history, during which it accused the Hungarian government of challenging its legal right to continue to operate in Hungary.
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In 2019, Michael Ignatieff was awarded the Dan David Prize for his contribution to defending democracy.
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On 31 July 2021 Michael Ignatieff stepped down as rector of CEU to be replaced by Shalini Randeria and announced he would step back into the classroom as a professor of history at CEU in January, 2022.
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Michael Ignatieff is a historian, a fiction writer and public intellectual who has written several books on international relations and nation building.
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Michael Ignatieff has written seventeen books, and has been described by the British Arts Council as "an extraordinarily versatile writer", in both the style and the subjects he writes about.
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Michael Ignatieff has contributed articles to publications including The Globe and Mail, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine.
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The works are to some extent autobiographical; for instance, Michael Ignatieff travelled to the Balkans and Kurdistan while working as a journalist, witnessing first hand the consequences of modern ethnic warfare.
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Philosophical writings by Michael Ignatieff include The Needs of Strangers and The Rights Revolution.
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Michael Ignatieff has written extensively on international development, peacekeeping and the international responsibilities of Western nations.
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Michael Ignatieff became an advocate for more active involvement and larger scale deployment of land forces by Western nations in future conflicts in the developing world.
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Michael Ignatieff was originally a prominent supporter of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
41.
Michael Ignatieff has adamantly maintained that he supports a complete ban on torture.
42.
In 2004, three Liberal organizers, former Liberal candidate Alfred Apps, Ian Davey and lawyer Daniel Brock, travelled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to convince Michael Ignatieff to move back to Canada and run for the House of Commons of Canada, and to consider a possible bid for the Liberal leadership should Paul Martin retire.
43.
Rocco Rossi, who was at that time a key Liberal Party organizer, had previously mentioned to Davey that Davey's father had said that Michael Ignatieff had "the makings of a prime minister".
44.
In January 2005, as a result of the efforts of Apps, Brock and Davey, press speculation that Michael Ignatieff could be a star candidate for the Liberals in the next election, and possibly a candidate to eventually succeed Prime Minister Paul Martin, the leader of the governing Liberal Party of Canada.
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Michael Ignatieff went on to defeat the Conservative candidate by a margin of roughly 5,000 votes to win the seat.
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Michael Ignatieff's campaign was headed by Senator David Smith, who had been a Chretien organizer, along with Ian Davey, Daniel Brock, Alfred Apps and Paul Lalonde, a Toronto lawyer and son of Marc Lalonde.
47.
Michael Ignatieff noted that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel's own B'Tselem have stated that war crimes were committed in Qana, describing the suggestion as "a serious matter precisely because Israel has a record of compliance, concern and respect for the laws of war and human rights".
48.
Michael Ignatieff added that he would not meet with Palestinian leaders who did not recognize Israel.
49.
At the leadership convention in Montreal, taking place at Palais des Congres, Michael Ignatieff entered as the apparent front-runner, having won more delegates to the convention than any other contender.
50.
However, due to massive movement towards Dion by delegates who supported Gerard Kennedy, Michael Ignatieff dropped to second on the third ballot.
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Since then, Michael Ignatieff has urged the Liberals to put aside their differences, saying "united we win, divided we lose".
52.
Michael Ignatieff held a news conference on November 13,2008, to announce his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.
53.
Michael Ignatieff was reportedly uncomfortable with a coalition with the NDP and support from the Bloc Quebecois, and has been described as one of the last Liberals to sign on.
54.
On March 25,2011, Michael Ignatieff introduced a motion of non-confidence against the Harper government to attempt to force a May 2011 federal election after the government was found to be in contempt of Parliament, the first such occurrence in Commonwealth history.
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The Liberals had considerable momentum when the writ was dropped, and Michael Ignatieff successfully squeezed NDP leader Jack Layton out of media attention, by issuing challenges to Harper for one-on-one debates.
56.
However opponents frequently criticized Michael Ignatieff's perceived political opportunism, particularly during the leaders debates when Layton criticized Michael Ignatieff for having a poor attendance record for Commons votes saying "You know, most Canadians, if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion".
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Michael Ignatieff failed to defend himself against these charges, and the debates were said to be a turning point for his party's campaign.
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Michael Ignatieff was subject to scathing attack ads by the Conservative Party, slamming him as "Just visiting" Canada for the sake of political advancement.
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On May 2,2011, Michael Ignatieff's Liberals lost 43 seats only winning 34 and thus slipped to third party status behind the NDP and the Conservatives, who gained a majority in Parliament.
60.
Michael Ignatieff was defeated by Conservative challenger Bernard Trottier, being the first incumbent Leader of the Official Opposition to lose his own seat since Charles Tupper's defeat in Cape Breton in 1900, as well as the first sitting Liberal leader since Mackenzie King lost his riding in the 1945 election.
61.
On May 3,2011, Michael Ignatieff announced that he would be resigning as leader of the party pending the appointment of an interim leader; his resignation went into effect on May 25 when Bob Rae was appointed as Michael Ignatieff's interim replacement.
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In 2013 Michael Ignatieff published a book about his political career called Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics.
63.
Michael Ignatieff didn't go into politics and through all that followed just to write a book.
64.
In October 2006, Michael Ignatieff indicated that he personally would not support ballistic missile defence nor the weaponization of space.
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Michael Ignatieff referred to the likelihood of America developing a Missile Defense System in his book Virtual War, but did not voice support for Canadian participation in such a scheme.
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Michael Ignatieff led the largest Liberal contingent of votes in favour, with at least five of his caucus supporters voting along with him to extend the mission.
67.
Contrary to the suggestion from the Conservative party that he was planning to form a government with the other opposition parties, Michael Ignatieff issued a statement on March 26,2011, stating that "[t]he party that wins the most seats on election day will form the government".
68.
Michael Ignatieff had received 11 honorary doctorates as of June 2009 including:.