Janet Ajzenstat


Janet Leslie Ajzenstat was a Canadian political scientist who was a professor of political science at McMaster University. The author of numerous works on Canadian political history, she is best known for The Political Thought of Lord Durham, where she argues that Durham's call for French-Canadian assimilation was consistent with liberal principles.

Background

As an undergraduate at University College, University of Toronto, Ajzenstat majored in art and archeology. Following graduation in 1959, she worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario, only turning to political science in the mid-1960s.
In 1959, she married philosopher and future fellow McMaster professor Samuel Ajzenstat. Their daughter, Oona Eisenstadt, is a professor of Jewish studies at Pomona College. Their son, Sandor Ajzenstat, is an artist. Her sister is the children's book creator Kady MacDonald Denton.
Ajzenstat received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Toronto under the supervision of Peter H. Russell. While a doctoral student, she was a teaching assistant for Allan Bloom's introductory political philosophy course. Bloom was a major influence on her thought and she described him in her dissertation as a "mentor and friend".
Ajzenstat died on 27 May 2025, at the age of 89.

Canadian federalism

Ajzenstat's view of Canadian federalism, which dismisses the idea of special status for Quebec or Indigenous people, provoked much scholarly debate, especially following the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord. A review of The Political Thought of Lord Durham described the book "as a bold revisionist analysis of Durham's political thought and as a clear defence of mainstream liberalism in the face of attempts to enshrine Quebec's 'distinctiveness' in Canadian federalism".
Ajzenstat also contends that so-called "judicial activism" undercuts the foundation of responsible government. For example, in Once and Future Canadian Democracy, she wrote about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: "We forgot that parliaments have an interest in securing rights. We began to think of parliaments as tyrants, ever ready to trespass on the citizen’s liberties, to invade the sphere of private rights. And we began to think of the courts and the courts alone as guardians of our precious rights and liberties". As a result, her work is well received by conservative scholars, such as Stephen Harper's former chief of staff Ian Brodie and political scientist Barry Cooper; the latter wrote in a review of Canada's Founding Debates, "This is revisionist history at its best".
Ajzenstat's work was the subject of two chapters in Canadian Conservative Political Thought, edited by Lee Trepanier and Richard Avramenko.

Awards

Ajzenstat was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, the John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History, and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Books

  • Articles

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