Michael Ignatieff, historian, philosopher, and politician, was born in Toronto, Canada, on 12 May 1947, the son of Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff, a Russian émigré, and his Canadian wife, Jessie Alison (née Grant). Among Ignatieff’s relatives were the Very Reverend Dr George Monro Grant, a Presbyterian minister and principal of Queen's University, and Sir George Parkin, a leading supporter of the movement for the Federation of the British Empire.

As is common for a diplomat’s family, the Ignatieffs moved regularly during Michael’s childhood. Once he graduated high school he studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College (BA, 1969). He then attended the University of Oxford, where he studied under philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin. After earning a PhD in history at Harvard University, Ignatieff taught at the University of British Columbia and in 1978 became a Senior Research Fellow at King's College, Cambridge.

After five years (beginning in 2000) as the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Ignatieff became the Chancellor Jackman Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto and a senior fellow of the university's Munk Centre for International Studies.

He delivered the Massey Lectures in 2000, published as The Rights Revolution. His Gifford Lectures, delivered in 2003, discuss human rights in the post-9/11 world and his The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, based on those lectures, was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He has also participated in the World Economic Forum in Geneva and deleivered the Amnesty 2005 Lecture at Trinity College, Dublin.

In his first political foray in Canada, in 2006 Ignatieff was elected to the House of Commons. In 2009 he was elected the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada.

Ignatieff is married for the second time. He has two children, a son and a daughter, from his first marriage.

While Ignatieff is a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, including a screenplay, among his most notable works is a biography of his former professor, Isaiah Berlin. His work has appeared regularly in the New York Times Magazine and many other publications. Among his book-length writings are A Just Measure of Pain: Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1850 (1978), The Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (editor with Istvan Hont, 1983), The Needs of Strangers (1984), Nineteen Nineteen (with Hugh Brody, 1985), The Russian Album (1987), Asya (1991), Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (1993), Scar Tissue (1993), Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998), The Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (1998), The Rights Revolution (2000), Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (2000), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001), Charlie Johnson in the Flames: A Novel (2003), Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan (2003), The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (based on his Gifford Lectures, 2004), American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (2005), After Paradise (2007), and True Patriot Love (2009).