What does Foreign Policy know that the rest of us can only hope? From its first-ever list of 100 leading global thinkers, number
"64. Michael Ignatieff: for showing that not all academics are irrelevant. Poised to become Canadian prime minister next year, only five years after leaving Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, [emphasis added] Ignatieff is out to prove the relevance of academia -- and big ideas -- in politics. Ignatieff's writing on the sometime necessity of "violence … coercion, secrecy, deception, even violation of rights" to fight terrorism has made him a singular voice among Canadian liberals. His 2004 book, The Lesser Evil, made the case that targeted violence was necessary to prevent the possibility of falling victim to greater violence, but stressed that democratic states should not employ torture or be motivated by national pride or revenge. In 2006 he was elected to Canada's House of Commons and in 2008 became leader of the Liberal Party. As a politician, he's renewed his party's focus on human rights, the war in Afghanistan, and more recently, global climate change, which he defines in characteristically utilitarian fashion as "redistributing risk to the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world."
link: Foreign Policy's First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy
I have to assume someone in the PMO has already been charged with turning this into another 'effete intellectual' attack ad. Congratulations from here, anyway.
