March 6, 2003
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.-Michael Ignatieff, the John J. McCloy '16 Professor of American Institutions and International Relations at Amherst College and professor of human rights at Harvard University, will deliver a lecture at Amherst College on "The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror," on Tuesday, April 8 at 7:30 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall. The event will be free and open to the public.
Ignatieff directs the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard. Concerned with ethnic war, he has traveled to Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan to consider the mix of moral solidarity and hubris that has led Western nations to attempt the improvement of the world. His essay, "The Burden," about the complications of American empire in the Iraq war, appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine January 5. Educated in Canada at Upper Canada College and Trinity College, Toronto and abroad at Harvard and Cambridge Universities, Ignatieff explores themes of war and modernity in his work.
His academic publications include Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (1983), The Needs of Strangers: An Essay on the Philosophy of Human Needs (1984), The Rights Revolution (1991), The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (1998), Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (2000), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001) and Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998).
His popular work also includes The Russian Album, A Family Memoir (1987) and Scar Tissue (1994), a novel short-listed for the Booker Prize.
The John J. McCloy '16 Professorship was established at Amherst College in 1983 to honor John J. McCloy and his outstanding career of service and accomplishment in American politics and international diplomacy. Ignatieff's visit is hosted by the Amherst College Department of Political Science.
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