Michael Ignatieff: Difference between revisions

Michael Grant Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff Michael Ignatieff
Riding	Etobicoke—Lakeshore
Political party:	Liberal
First elected:	2006 election
Profession(s):	Author, journalist, professor

Michael Grant Ignatieff, M.P., (born May 12, 1947 in Toronto) is a Canadian scholar, novelist and Liberal Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons. He was elected on January 23 2006, representing the southwestern Toronto riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore. Ignatieff was named associate critic for Human Resources and Skills Development in the Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet on February 22 2006. However, he soon had to give up this position after announcing on April 7 2006 that he would stand as one of the Liberal Party of Canada leadership candidates.

Background

Ignatieff is the son of Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff and Alison Grant, and the grandson of Count Paul Ignatieff, who was the Tsar's last Minister of Education and one of the few Tsarist ministers who escaped execution by the Bolsheviks. His Canadian antecedents include his maternal great grandfather, George Monro Grant, the dynamic 19th century principal of Queen's University. His mother's younger brother was the political philosopher George Grant (1918-1988), author of Lament for a Nation. His great-grandfather was Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, the Russian Minister of the Interior under Tsar Alexander III. In his book called The Russian Album, Ignatieff explores the importance of memory and obligation to ancestry in the context of his own family's history. Ignatieff speaks English and French, and has a basic knowledge of Russian, the native language of his father.

Michael Ignatieff grew up in Toronto, attending Upper Canada College. As a high school student, he worked for Lester B. Pearson, canvassing the York South riding for the 1965 election. He continued his work for the Liberal Party in 1968, as a national youth organizer and party delegate for the Pierre Elliot Trudeau campaign.

After high school, Ignatieff studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College. There, he met fellow student (and future Premier of Ontario) Bob Rae, who became a friend. After completing his undergraduate degree, Ignatieff took up his studies at Oxford University, where he studied under the well-known historian and philosopher Isaiah Berlin, about whom he would later write. From 1964 to 1965, Ignatieff worked as a journalist at The Globe and Mail newspaper.

In 1976, Ignatieff completed his PhD in History at Harvard University. He went on to teach at the University of British Columbia from 1976 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he held a Senior Research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge until 1984. Michael then left Cambridge for London, where he began to focus on his career as a writer and journalist. During this time, he travelled extensively. He also continued to lecture at universities in Europe and North America, and held teaching posts at the Oxford, the University of London, and the London School of Economics, as well as the University of California and in France.

While living in the United Kingdom, Ignatieff also became well known as a broadcaster on radio and television. His best known television work was as presenter of 'Voices' on Channel 4, a BBC 2 discussion programme called "Thinking Aloud" and BBC 2's arts programme, The Late Show. His documentary series Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism aired on BBC in 1993. He was also an editorial columnist for The Observer from 1990 to 1993.

In 2000, Ignatieff accepted a position as the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He taught at Harvard until 2005, when on August 26, it was announced that Ignatieff was leaving Harvard to become the Chancellor Jackman Visiting Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto.

To date, Michael Ignatieff has seven honorary doctorates to his name. He is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna Zsohar and has two children from his first marriage to Susan Barrowclough [1], Theo and Sophie. Susan Barrowclough still resides in London England and said that Michael had "left his family (in England) when his daughter was eight and his son was eleven" and that Michael then went to the United States when they were 13 and 16 years old. Barrowclough also said that Mr. Ignatieff stayed in touch with his children after leaving England "only by telephone". Ms. Barrowclough said her son, Theo, is presently in Toronto (Where Ignatieff lives), on an unrelated visit, but has not been invited to stay with his father.[2][3]Ignatieff lives in the upscale area of Yorkville, Toronto.

Recognition

Michael Ignatieff is an internationally recognized scholar and historian, and has written extensively on the subjects of international relations and nation-building. He has published 16 fiction and non-fiction books, which have been translated into 12 languages. Additionally, he has contributed numerous articles to newspapers such as The Globe and Mail and The New York Times Magazine. Maclean's named him among the "Top 10 Canadian Who's Who" in 1997 and among the "50 Most Influential Canadians Shaping Society" in 2002.

Ignatieff's memoir of his family's experiences in nineteenth-century Russia (and subsequent exile), The Russian Album, won the the Canadian 1987 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize. His 1998 biography of Isaiah Berlin was shortlisted for both the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

His text on Western interventionist policies and nation building, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, studied the NATO bombing of Kosovo and subsequent aftermath. It won the Orwell Prize for political non-fiction in 2000. He also worked with the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in preparing the report, The Responsibility to Protect, which discussed the role of international involvement in Kosovo, Rwanda, and the Darfur region of Sudan.

In addition, his book on the dangers of ethnic nationalism in the Post-Cold war period, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the University of Toronto's Lionel Gelber Prize. Blood and Belonging was based on Ignatieff's Gemini Award winning 1993 television series of the same name.

Michael Igantieff also delivered the Massey Lectures in 2000. Entitled The Rights Revolution, the series was released in print later that year. In 2004, Michael published The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, a philosophical work analyzing human rights in the post-9/11 world. It was also a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize, and attracted consiberably attention (much of it critical) for its attempts to reconcile the democratic ideals of western liberal societies with the often coercive nature of the War on Terrorism.

Ignatieff also writes fiction; one of his novels, Scar Tissue, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. In addition to writing, he has also been a participant and panel leader at the World Economic Forum in Geneva.

Ideas

Canadian culture

In The Rights Revolution, Ignatieff discusses what he calls Canada's "distinctive" rights culture. For Ignatieff, Canada's progressive stance on multiculturalism and recognition of minority and group rights contributes to the uniqueness of Canada's secular liberal society:

"First, on moral questions such as abortion, capital punishment and gay rights, our legal codes are notably liberal, secular and pro-choice. In this, they approximate European standards more closely than American ones. Despite the fact that we share our way of life and our public media with our neighbours to the south, our habits of mind on rights questions are very much our own. Second, our culture is social democratic in its approach to rights to welfare and public assistance. Canadians take it for granted that citizens do have the right to free health care, as well as to unemployment insurance and publicly funded pensions. Again, the comparison with the republic to the south is noteworthy. The third distinguishing feature of our rights culture, of course, is our particular emphasis on group rights. This is expressed, first, in Quebec’s Charte de la language francaise (Bill 101) and, second, in the treaty agreements that have given land and resources to aboriginal groups. Apart from New Zealand, no other country has given such recognition to the idea of group rights."

Equality rights

Ignatieff also discusses the notion of "equality" at length in The Rights Revolution:

"How do we generate a world in common? We take actual human individuals – rich, poor, young, old, homosexual, heterosexual, white, black, in between, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew (ie: human beings in all their embodied difference) – and we imagine them as equal bearers of rights... The entire legitimacy of public institutions depends on our being attentive to difference while treating all as equal. This is the gamble, the unique act of the imagination on which our society rests."

The lesser evil approach

In addressing the threat of terrorism, Ignatieff argues that governments may need to take a "lesser evil" approach that finds a middle ground between adhering to the rule of law and sanctioning coercion. The central question of this approach is how far the state can justify using coercive, undemocratic measures to secure a free and democratic society, and conversely, at what point those measures themselves become as offensive to freedom and democracy as the threats they seek to prevent:

When democracies fight terrorism, they are defending the proposition that their political life should be free of violence. But defeating terror requires violence. It may also require coercion, secrecy, deception, even violation of rights. How can democracies resort to these means without destroying the values for which they stand? How can they resort to the lesser evil without succumbing to the greater?

Ignatieff attempts to balance citizens' rights to privacy and civil liberties against the state's need for surveillance to investigate terrorist activities. In the of context this "lesser evil" analysis, Ignatieff discusses whether liberal democracies should employ coercive interrogation and torture. His highly nuanced position has generated significant controversy.

Ignatieff draws a distinction between "torture" and "coercive interrogation." His definition of torture includes "physical coercion or abuse, any involuntary use of drugs and the deprivation of basic food, water, medicine and rest necessary for survival." Ignatieff's definition of coercion includes "forms of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health, together with disinformation and disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods) that would produce stress". Some have observed that Ignatieff's definition of torture is much more narrow than traditionally accepted definitions of torture, and he has been accused of trying to restrict its definition.

Ignatieff's writings weigh the potential advantages of a "lesser evil" approach to torture — using it to help prevent terrorist attacks — against the potentially corrosive effect of torture on society. Though he sees some merit in coercive interrogation, he ultimately concludes that he supports "an absolute and unconditional ban on both torture and those forms of coercive interrogation that involve stress and duress." However, his use of the words "absolute and unconditional" must be carefully parsed, since he also writes that "there is the problem of the exceptional case" where authorities may judge torture to be necessary to save lives. In order to accommodate such cases, Ignatieff proposes that a "defense of necessity" be included in any anti-torture law.

These views have attacted considerable attention, much of it critical. Indeed, several commentators have condemned Ignatieff's post-9/11 writings as furthering an anti-human rights agenda. Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the London School of Economics, characterised intellectuals like Ignatieff as "apologists for human rights abuses" who provided United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "the intellectual tools with which to justify his government's expansionism," creating an atmosphere in which torture ordered by the US government might be condoned. Similarly, Mariano Aguirre, co-director of the Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior in Madrid, wrote a condemnation of Ignatieff's views, stating that he "mixes history and propaganda" by ignoring historical precedents regarding US government human rights abuses.

Invasion of Iraq

Ignatieff was a prominent supporter of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, a position which he acknowledged was controversial among liberals. He argued that America had inadvertently established "an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known." The burden of that empire obliged America to expend itself unseating Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the interests of international security and human rights. Containment through sanctions and threats would not prevent Hussein from selling weapons of mass destruction to international terrorists, Ignatieff asserted, erroneously believing those weapons were still being developed in Iraq. Moreover, according to Ignatieff, "what Saddam Hussein had done to the Kurds and the Shia" in Iraq (citing in particular the infamous Halabja poison gas attack in 1992) was sufficient justification for the invasion.

In the years following the invasion, Ignatieff has reiterated his support for the war's aims, if not the method in which it was conducted. "I supported an administration whose intentions I didn't trust," he averred, "believing that the consequences would repay the gamble. Now I realize that intentions do shape consequences."

Ballistic missile defense

Ignatieff is a strong advocate for the construction of a ground-based North American Missile Defence Shield. In his book "Virtual War," Ignatieff wrote: "America will become more vulnerable to attack. In response it will have to develop missile defense systems to protect the continental United States."

In a speech to the 2005 biennial Liberal policy conference, Ignatieff generated controversy by suggesting that while opposition to the proposed Canada-U.S. North American Missile Defense Shield was a popular position within the party, "we need to balance a principled opposition to the future weaponization of space with an equally principled commitment to participate in North American defence right now. We don't want our decisions to fracture the command system of North American defence."

Controversies

Doubts about his national self-identity

Critics of Ignatieff question his commitment to Canada, pointing out that Ignatieff has lived outside of Canada for more than 30 years. He has also come under fire for writing editorials from the perspective of an American, and, when writing for The Observer in the early 1990s, as an Englishman.[4]. In these articles, Ignatieff used the words "we" or "us" in reference to the US or Britain, implying an identification with those countries.

Ignatieff has also expressed an admiration for America, such as in a 2002 Granta article describing the comraderie of a Vietnam war protest. In it, Ignatieff writes, "I’m a Canadian, but it was inevitable that the great cause of my growing up was an American war, not a Canadian wrong. I loved my own country, but I believed in America in a way that Canada never allowed. I was against the war because I thought it betrayed something essential about the country. I marched because I believed in Jefferson and Lincoln."

Ignatieff was questioned about his close identification with America by Peter Newman in a Macleans's interview published on April 6 2006. He apologised for referring to himself as an American and said, "Sometimes you want to increase your influence over your audience by appropriating their voice, but it was a mistake. Every single one of the students from 85 countries who took my courses at Harvard knew one thing about me: I was that funny Canadian."

Remarks about Ukrainian-Canadians

During Ignatieff's nomination for the Liberal candidacy in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, some Ukrainian-Canadian members of the riding association expressed resentment at remarks Ignatieff had made in his 1993 book Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, in which he wrote:

"I have reasons to take the Ukraine seriously indeed. But, to be honest, I'm having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of peasant embroidered shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phony Cossacks in cloaks and boots..."

Some critics have taken this statement as being anti-Ukrainian. Ignatieff supporters, however, maintain that the above quote was taken out of context, from a chapter in which Ignatieff argues against such stereotypes.

Political career

Michael Ignatieff speaking to citizens in the riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore, at Assembly Hall in Etobicoke, 18 January 2006.

In January 2005, speculation began in the press that Ignatieff could be a star candidate for the Liberals in the next election, and some suggested he could be an ideal candidate to succeed Paul Martin, then the leader of the governing Liberal Party of Canada.

After months of rumours and repeated denials, Ignatieff confirmed in November 2005 that he intended to run for a seat in the House of Commons in the winter 2006 election. It was announced that Ignatieff would seek the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore. Jean Augustine, the well-liked, long-serving Liberal MP of that riding, stepped aside and endorsed Ignatieff's nomination.

Two other candidates filed for the nomination but were disqualified (one, because he was not a member of the party and the second because he had failed to resign from his position on the riding association executive). The two appealed Ignatieff's acclamation, but without success. Ignatieff went on to defeat the Conservative candidate by a margin of roughly 5,000 votes to win the seat.

Leadership bid

After the Liberal government was defeated in the January, 2006 federal election, Paul Martin resigned from party leadership. On April 7, 2006, Michael Ignatieff announced his candidacy in the upcoming Liberal leadership race, joining several others who had already declared their candidacy.

Ignatieff has received several high profile endorsements of his candidacy. His campaign is headed up by Senator David Smith, a powerful Chrétien organizer, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey), Alfred Apps, a Toronto lawyer and fundraiser, and Paul Lalonde a Toronto lawyer and son of Marc Lalonde.

Extension of Canada's Afghanistan mission

Since his election to Parliament, Ignatieff has been notable among the oppposition members for supporting the minority Conservative government's commitment to Canadian military acitivity in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called a vote in the House of Commons for May 17, 2006 on extending the Canadian Forces current deployment in Afghanistan until February 2009. During the debate, Ignatieff expressed his "unequivocal support for the troops in Afghanistan, for the mission, and also for the renewal of the mission." He argued that the Afghanistan mission tests the success of Canada's shift from "the peacekeeping paradigm to the peace-enforcement paradigm," the latter combining "military, reconstruction and humanitarian efforts together."

The opposition Liberal caucus of 102 MPs was divided, with 24 MPs supporting the extension, 66 voting against, and 12 abstentions. Among Liberal leadership candidates, Ignatieff and Scott Brison, voted for the extension. 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. Following the vote, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper crossed the floor to shake Ignatieff's hand.

In a subsequent campaign appearance, Ignatieff reiterated his view of the mission in Afghanistan, stating "the thing that Canadians have to understand about Afghanistan is that we are well past the era of Pearsonian peacekeeping."

Bibliography

Fiction

• Asya, 1991
• Scar Tissue, 1993
• Charlie Johnson in the Flames, 2005

Non-Fiction

• A Just Measure of Pain: Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1850, 1978
• The Needs of Strangers, 1984
• The Russian Album, 1987
• Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism, 1994
• Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, 1997
• Isaiah Berlin: A Life, 1998
• Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, 2000
• The Rights Revolution, Viking, 2000
• Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Anansi Press Ltd, 2001
• Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, Minerva, 2003
• The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, 2004
• American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (ed.), Princeton University Press, 2005.

Recent Articles

• The Broken Contract, The New York Times Magazine, September 25, 2005.
• Iranian Lessons, The New York Times Magazine, July 17, 2005.
• Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?, The New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2005.
• The Uncommitted, The New York Times Magazine, January 30, 2005.
• The Terrorist as Auteur, The New York Times Magazine, November 14, 2004.
• Mirage in the Desert, The New York Times Magazine, 27 June 2004.
• Could We Lose the War on Terror?: Lesser Evils, (cover story), The New York Times Magazine, 2 May 2004.
• The Year of Living Dangerously, The New York Times Magazine, 14 March 2004.
• Arms and the Inspector, Los Angeles Times, 14 March 2004.
• Peace, Order and Good Government: A Foreign Policy Agenda for Canada, OD Skelton Lecture, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa, March 12, 2004.
• Why America Must Know Its Limits, Financial Times, 24 December 2003.
• A Mess of Intervention. Peacekeeping. Pre-emption. Liberation. Revenge. When should we send in the Troops?, The New York Times Magazine [cover story], 7 September 2003.
• I am Iraq, The New York Times Magazine, 31 March 2003 [Reprinted in the The Guardian and The National Post].
• American Empire: The Burden, (cover story), The New York Times Magazine, 5 January 2003.
• Acceptance Speech from the 2003 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking
• Mission Impossible?, A Review of A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, by David Rieff (Simon and Schuster, 2002), Printed in The New York Review of Books, 19 December 2002.
• When a Bridge Is Not a Bridge, New York Times Magazine, 27 October 2002.
• The Divided West, The Financial Times, 31 August 2002.
• Nation Building Lite, (cover story) The New York Times Magazine, 28 July 2002.
• The Rights Stuff, New York Times of Books, 13 June 2002.
• No Exceptions?, Legal Affairs, May/June 2002.
• Why Bush Must Send in His Troops, The Guardian, 19 April 2002.
• Barbarians at the Gates?, The New York Times Book Review, 18 February 2002.
• Is the Human Rights Era Ending?, New York Times, 5 February 2002.
• Intervention and State Failure, Dissent, Winter 2002.
• Kaboul-Sarajevo: Les nouvelles frontiers de l'empire, Seuil, 2002.

External links

Official sites

• Michael Ignatieff Leadership Campaign Website
• Official Website of Michael Ignatieff, Etobicoke-Lakeshore
• Federal Political Biography from the Library of Parliament

Articles by Ignatieff

• The Meaning of Diana, Prospect Magazine, October 23, 1997. A review of Diana Spencer.
• Why Bush must send in his troops, The Guardian, April 19 2002. On why Ignatieff believes a two-state solution is the last chance for Middle East peace.
• The Burden, The New York Times Magazine, January 5, 2003. Written just prior to the Iraq war, this article explains his support for the invasion.
• The Lesser Evil: Hard Choices in a War on Terror, Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, January 23 2004.
• The Year of Living Dangerously, The New York Times Magazine, March 14, 2004. A follow-up to The Burden, discussing the war.
• Lesser Evils, New York Times Magazine, May 2 2004. An article on finding the balance between civil liberties and security.
• A Generous Helping of Liberal Brains, The Globe and Mail, March 4, 2005. An excerpt from his address to the biennial policy conference of the Liberal Party.
• Ignatieff on Torture, The Toronto Star, April 9, 2006. An extract from Torture: Does it Make Us Safer? Is it Ever OK? that summarizes Ignatieff's writings.

Commentaries and Reviews

• Ignatieff's Realm, The Walrus. A thorough overview of Ignatieff's academic work and views. Written by Alex Mazer.
• No more Mr Nice Guy New Humanist, September 21 2005. An op-ed criticism of Ignatieff by Laurie Taylor.
• Canada asks Ignatieff: Are you one of us? The Daily Telegraph, January 15, 2006. A summary of the critiques that have been levied against Ignatieff.
• But where's the context? Toronto Star, April 9 2006. A meta-analysis of Ignatieff's critics and supporters.
• Getting a read on Michael Ignatieff Toronto Star, May 1 2006. A survey of the issues surrounding him.
• The Trouble with Ignatieff A blog entry by James Laxer which discusses the problems Mr. Ignatieff might face as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
• Dallaire backs Ignatieff to lead Liberals, Ottawa Citizen, July 3, 2006. General Romeo Dallaire on Ignatieff's leadership bid.