Ignatieff, Michael

ENCAENIA, MAY, 2001
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF
to be Doctor of Letters

Today we welcome Michael Ignatieff, one of the most remarkable Canadians of his generation. He is a historian, journalist, television producer and host, prolific author, occasional teacher, and perennial scholar.

He is a Canadian who has lived outside Canada more than he has lived in it. But that only partly explains his cosmopolitan interests and his fascination with international affairs. Equally important in his formation has been his family background and upbringing. "I have two pasts," is how he has put it. His mother was Scottish Canadian, from a Toronto family with Nova Scotia roots. His father's side he has only known through stories and family photos, of a grandfather and great grandfathers who served as diplomats for the Russian czar, and a father who emigrated to Canada in his youth, a refugee from the Russian Revolution. His father became a Canadian diplomat and a quite unabashed champion of his adopted country. For young Michael, growing up was a constant change of scenery from the capitals of Europe to Ottawa and Toronto which, by default, passed as home. Having two pasts gave him a choice to identify with whatever he fancied. The Canadian side, he has said, is something he has always taken for granted. The Russian side, on the other hand, was always the more romantic.

Whether it was family background or world travel that shaped his interests, Michael Ignatieff entered the University of Toronto to study history. He earned a BA in history with first class honours and went on to Harvard where he completed his Ph.D. His dissertation was eventually published under the title A Just Measure of Pain: the Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, and it explored the new philosophy of punishment that emerged in England in what is often called the age of reform. For a short time thereafter, he taught history at the University of British Columbia before accepting a position as Senior Research Fellow at King's College Cambridge. Here he had the opportunity to meet scholars who were interested, as he was, in the roots of humanitarian thought. A colloquium held in 1979 seems to have been particularly influential in the development of his ideas, examining as it did the Scottish Enlightenment and the civic humanist tradition. The concept of civic nationalism has been an aspect of his analysis ever since.

It was in 1985, after he left Cambridge, that Michael Ignatieff became a familiar face on British television. He began writing television documentaries, traveling with film crews to the world's hotspots, and appearing as an articulate host. As in his books, he tackled the historical movements of our time, from the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany, to the moral reordering of post-apartheid South Africa. His unique contribution was to render the complexities of contemporary developments intelligible. He tackled the ambiguities and contradictions of current geopolitics, and as he had done in all of his previous work, he focused on the moral issues they raised.

It is difficult to reduce his analysis and insights to a word or two. But a salient theme of his writing, whether for television or print, has been the anomalous persistence of ethnic nationalism in a world otherwise characterized by the collapse of imperialism and the emergence of a global market. He has written brilliantly about the turmoil of the former Yugoslavia, and the ethnic ambitions of Quebecois, Kurds, Ukrainians, and Northern Irish. Most especially, he has opened up the moral dimension posed by the emergence of ethnic warlords on the one hand, and individuals struggling to maintain their rights and particularly their freedom of choice, on the other. The dilemma reminds him of Romeo and Juliet. To use his words: "In the front lines of Bosnia, in the states of Loyalist and Republican Belfast, in all the places where the tribal gangsters - the Montagues and Capulets of our day - are enforcing the laws of ethnic loyalty, there are Juliets and Romeos who still cry out 'Oh, let me not be a Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Catholic or Protestant. Let me only be myself."

The individual's struggle to be himself or herself is the central issue for Michael Ignatieff, but it is an issue that raises far more questions: do supposedly enlightened nations impose their values on those they consider unenlightened? Does the so-called "international community" have an obligation to intervene in every civil war in order to preserve human rights and individual dignity? Can a code of civic justice be made to prevail over the laws of ethnic loyalty? These are questions he raised during this past year with students at Harvard University. In the fall of 2000, he presented a course in Human Rights at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. In fact, all of his recent engagements have focused on the promotion of human rights. He served on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, and is currently serving on the Independent International Commission on Sovereignty and Intervention. In a word, Michael Ignatieff practices what he preaches. He is raising our consciousness of the human rights challenges of our time. And he forces us to examine the moral dimension of public policy, most recently as it relates to defense planning and the application of force.

Michael Ignatieff is a modern conscience, a Canadian whose view of the world transcends nationalism, and a scholar whose analysis embodies the civic values of Renaissance humanism. Like the idealists of the Scottish Enlightenment, he is a man of virtue. He does us great honour by coming here today.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3