The populist challenge to liberal democracy is being waged in the name of democracy: the people versus the elites, the majority versus minorities, the electorate versus the courts. Instead of seeing the populism as a threat, we should think of it as a challenge that liberal democracy is fully capable of meeting. Liberal constitutionalism is built for crisis, and the populist crisis could end up strengthening our democracy, provided liberal institutions—and elites—respond.
About our Speaker
Born in Canada, educated at the University of Toronto and Harvard, Michael Ignatieff is a university professor, writer and former politician.
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), Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (2013), and The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World (2017).
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 thirteen honorary degrees. Between 2012 and 2015 he served as Centennial Chair at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. Between 2014 and 2016 he was Edward R. Murrow Professor of the Practice of the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
He is currently the Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest and a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
