The Top 100 Public Intellectuals according to Foreign Policy

Farzad-USA

Bench Warmer
Apr 4, 2007
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0
rooyesh.blog.com
#1
n our last issue, we named the world’s top 100 public intellectuals and asked readers to vote for those they deem most deserving of the top honors. Now, 500,000 votes later, we reveal the results of the reader poll. Plus, members of the Top 100 name the intellectuals they believe should have made the list.

Rankings are an inherently dangerous business. Whether offering a hierarchy of countries, cities, or colleges, any such list—at least any such list worth compiling—is likely to generate a fair amount of debate. In the last issue, when we asked readers to vote for their picks of the world’s top public intellectuals, we imagined many people would want to make their opinions known. But no one expected the avalanche of voters who came forward. During nearly four weeks of voting, more than 500,000 people came to ForeignPolicy.com to cast ballots.


Such an outpouring reveals something unique about the power of the men and women we chose to rank. They were included on our initial list of 100 in large part because of the influence of their ideas. But part of being a “public intellectual” is also having a talent for communicating with a wide and diverse public. This skill is certainly an asset for some who find themselves in the list’s top ranks. For example, a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites. Others issued press releases or gave interviews to local newspapers. Press coverage profiling these intellectuals appeared around the world, with stories running in Canada, India, Indonesia, Qatar, Spain, and elsewhere.


No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day.


FETHULLAH GÜLEN
Religious leader • Turkey
An Islamic scholar with a global network of millions of followers, Gülen is both revered and reviled in his native Turkey. To members of the Gülen movement, he is an inspirational leader who encourages a life guided by moderate Islamic principles. To his detractors, he represents a threat to Turkey’s secular order. He has kept a relatively low profile since settling in the United States in 1999, having fled Turkey after being accused of undermining secularis

MUHAMMAD YUNUS
Microfinancier, activist • Bangladesh
More than 30 years ago, Yunus loaned several dozen poor entrepreneurs in his native Bangladesh a total of $27. It was the beginning of a lifetime devoted to fighting poverty through microfinance, efforts that earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Over the years, his Grameen Bank, now operating in more than 100 countries, has loaned nearly $7 billion in small sums to more than 7 million borrowers—97 percent of them women. Ninety-eight percent of the loans have been repaid.

YUSUF AL-QARADAWI
Cleric • Egypt/Qatar
The host of the popular Sharia and Life TV program on Al Jazeera, Qaradawi issues w .eekly fatwas on everything from whether Islam forbids all consumption of alcohol (no) to whether fighting U.S. troops in Iraq is a legitimate form of resistance (yes). Considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qaradawi condemned the September 11 attacks, but his pronouncements since, like his justification of suicide attacks, ensure his divisive reputation.

ORHAN PAMUK
Novelist • Turkey
Part political pundit, part literary celebrity, Pamuk is the foremost chronicler of Turkey’s difficult dance between East and West. His skillfully crafted works lay bare his native country’s thorny relationship with religion, democracy, and modernity, earning him a Nobel Prize in literature in 2006. Three years ago, Pamuk was put on trial for “insulting Turkish identity” after mentioning the Armenian genocide and the plight of Turkey’s Kurds in an interview. The charges were later dropped. Today, Pamuk teaches literature at Columbia University.

AITZAZ AHSAN
Lawyer, politician • Pakistan
President of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, Ahsan has been a vocal opponent of President Pervez Musharraf’s rule. When Musharraf dismissed the head of the Supreme Court in March 2007, it was Ahsan who led the legal challenge to reinstate the chief justice and rallied thousands of lawyers who took to the streets in protest. He was arrested several times during the period of emergency rule last year. Today, he is a senior member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, formerly led by Benazir Bhutto, and one of the country’s most recognizable politicians.

AMR KHALED
Muslim televangelist • Egypt
A former accountant turned rock-star evangelist, Khaled preaches a folksy interpretation of modern Islam to millions of loyal viewers around the world. With a charismatic oratory and casual style, Khaled blends messages of cultural integration and hard work with lessons on how to live a purpose-driven Islamic life. Although Khaled got his start in Egypt, he recently moved to Britain to counsel young, second-generation European Muslims.


ABDOLKARIM SOROUSH
Religious theorist • Iran

Soroush, a former university professor in Tehran and specialist in chemistry, Sufi poetry, and history, is widely considered one of the world’s premier Islamic philosophers. Having fallen afoul of the mullahs thanks to his work with Iran’s democratic activists, he has lately decamped to Europe and the United States, where his essays and lectures on religious philosophy and human rights are followed closely by Iran’s reformist movement.
TARIQ RAMADAN
Philosopher, scholar of Islam • Switzerland
One of the most well-known and controversial Muslim scholars today, Ramadan embodies the cultural and religious clash he claims to be trying to bridge. His supporters consider him a passionate advocate for Muslim integration in Europe. His critics accuse him of anti-Semitism and having links to terrorists. In 2004, Ramadan was denied a U.S. visa to teach at Notre Dame, after the State Department accused him of donating to Islamic charities linked to Hamas.

MAHMOOD MAMDANI
Cultural anthropologist • Uganda
Born in Uganda to South Asian parents, Mamdani was expelled from the country by Idi Amin in 1972, eventually settling in the United States. His work explores the role of citizenship, identity, and the creation of historical narratives in postcolonial Africa. More recently, he has focused his attention on political Islam and U.S. foreign policy, arguing that modern Islamist terrorism is a byproduct of the privatization of violence in the final years of the Cold War. He teaches at Columbia University.

SHIRIN EBADI
Lawyer, human rights activist • Iran
Iran’s first female judge under the shah, Ebadi founded a pioneering law practice after she was thrown off the bench by Iran’s clerical rulers. Having initially supported the Islamic Revolution, she cut her teeth defending political dissidents and campaigning for the rights of women and children. A fierce nationalist who sees no incompatibility between Islam and democracy, Ebadi became the first Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

NOAM CHOMSKY
Linguist, activist • United States
Chomsky is perhaps best known for his scathing criticisms of U.S. foreign policy extending back to the Vietnam War. An outspoken activist, a lively debater, and an icon of the international left, Chomsky rarely shies away from assailing American power and venerating those he deems the world’s oppressed. The failures of American mass media and the greed of big business are also frequent targets of his critiques. Beyond his political provocations, Chomsky’s contributions to modern linguistics are immense, particularly his theory of generative grammar. The bestselling author of more than 30 books, Chomsky has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than half a century.

AL GORE
Climate change activist, politician • United States
From the dejection of losing the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Gore has come to define political renaissance—and vindication—in the years since. For his second act, Gore found his true voice in raising public awareness of the effects of global warming. His efforts have earned him an impressive list of titles—Oscar winner and Nobel Peace Prize recipient among them—and acclaim as perhaps today’s most influential environmental crusader.

BERNARD LEWIS
Historian • Britain/United States
Professor emeritus at Princeton University and the author of dozens of books, Lewis is one of the foremost historians of the Middle East. He is also one of the most sought-after advisors on the region’s politics and on Islamic society. Lewis’s works have recently focused on the source of antagonism between Islam and the West, a conflict he attributes to Islam’s failure to adapt to modernity.

UMBERTO ECO
Novelist, semiologist • Italy
Renowned for intricate, richly written novels that blend obscure historical events with complex plots and symbols, Eco is easily one of the world’s most scholarly writers of fiction. His day job, professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, provides him ample material for his bestselling books, which have been described as encyclopedic in their historical breadth.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Activist, politician • Somalia/Netherlands
A fierce critic of Islam’s treatment of women, the Somalia-born Hirsi Ali is known for her full-throated defense of the West, reason, and freedom. Her public rebellion against her Islamic upbringing has come with a steep cost: death threats and around-the-clock protection. She first received notoriety for penning Submission, a film renouncing the subjugation of Muslim women. (The film’s director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim fanatic in Amsterdam in 2004.) After being elected to the Dutch parliament in 2003, Hirsi Ali resigned her post three years later over a scandal involving false information on her citizenship application.

AMARTYA SEN
Development economist • India
As a young boy, Sen witnessed the devastating 1943 Bengal famine, which killed nearly 3 million people. Decades later, Sen’s investigations of the political and economic underpinnings of famines established him as the premier welfare economist of the 20th century. In addition to his famous assertion that famines do not occur in democracies, Sen was one of the first economists to empirically examine gender disparities in Asia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1998.

FAREED ZAKARIA
Journalist, author • United States
Editor of Newsweek International, Zakaria is one of the most influential and respected commentators on international affairs. His article “Why Do They Hate Us?” a Newsweek cover story in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, upended the conventional explanations of the day for a nuanced discussion of the economic, political, and social forces pulling Islamic societies apart.

GARRY KASPAROV
Democracy activist, chess grandmaster • Russia
One of the greatest chess players of all time, Kasparov is today a leading opposition figure in Russia, critical of Vladimir Putin’s tenure and the election of his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Agitating against what he calls a “police state,” Kasparov heads the anti-Kremlin coalition The Other Russia, which frequently stages pro-democracy protests. He recently launched an “alternative parliament” in a bid to unite the country’s opposition.

RICHARD DAWKINS
Biologist, author • Britain
One of the world’s preeminent evolutionary biologists, Dawkins established an international reputation with his 1976 work, The Selfish Gene, which holds that genes compete to propagate. He possesses a renowned ability to synthesize and communicate complex scientific ideas to the wider public. He is perhaps best known today for his criticism of creationism and religion. An avowed atheist, his most recent bestselling work, The God Delusion, is a vigorous defense of science and reason.

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
Novelist, politician • Peru
A giant of Latin American literature, Vargas Llosa has written dozens of works of fiction, drama, and literary criticism in his decades-long career. He is a firm believer in literature’s power to expose the injustice and tyranny of dictatorships, while providing moving defenses of free speech and individual liberty. He writes frequently on political issues in widely published columns.


1. Fethullah Gülen
2. Muhammad Yunus
3. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi
4. Orhan Pamuk
5. Aitzaz Ahsan
6. Amr Khaled
7. Abdolkarim Soroush
8. Tariq Ramadan
9. Mahmood Mamdani
10. Shirin Ebadi
11. Noam Chomsky
12. Al Gore
13. Bernard Lewis
14. Umberto Eco
15. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
16. Amartya Sen
17. Fareed Zakaria
18. Garry Kasparov
19. Richard Dawkins
20. Mario Vargas Llosa
21. Lee Smolin
22. Jürgen Habermas
23. Salman Rushdie
24. Sari Nusseibeh
25. Slavoj Zizek
26. Vaclav Havel
27. Christopher Hitchens
28. Samuel Huntington
29. Peter Singer
30. Paul Krugman
31. Jared Diamond
32. Pope Benedict XVI
33. Fan Gang
34. Michael Ignatieff
35. Fernando Henrique Cardoso
36. Lilia Shevtsova
37. Charles Taylor
38. Martin Wolf
39. E.O. Wilson
40. Thomas Friedman
41. Bjørn Lomborg
42. Daniel Dennett
43. Francis Fukuyama
44. Ramachandra Guha
45. Tony Judt
46. Steven Levitt
47. Nouriel Roubini
48. Jeffrey Sachs
49. Wang Hui
50. V.S. Ramachandran
51. Drew Gilpin Faust
52. Lawrence Lessig
53. J.M. Coetzee
54. Fernando Savater
55. Wole Soyinka
56. Yan Xuetong
57. Steven Pinker
58. Alma Guillermoprieto
59. Sunita Narain
60. Anies Baswedan
61. Michael Walzer
62. Niall Ferguson
63. George Ayittey
64. Ashis Nandy
65. David Petraeus
66. Olivier Roy
67. Lawrence Summers
68. Martha Nussbaum
69. Robert Kagan
70. James Lovelock
71. J. Craig Venter
72. Amos Oz
73. Samantha Power
74. Lee Kuan Yew
75. Hu Shuli
76. Kwame Anthony Appiah
77. Malcolm Gladwell
78. Alexander De Waal
79. Gianni Riotta
80. Daniel Barenboim
81. Thérèse Delpech
82. William Easterly
83. Minxin Pei
84. Richard Posner
85. Ivan Krastev
86. Enrique Krauze
87. Anne Applebaum
88. Rem Koolhaas
89. Jacques Attali
90. Paul Collier
91. Esther Duflo
92. Michael Spence
93. Robert Putnam
94. Harold Varmus
95. Howard Gardner
96. Daniel Kahneman
97. Yegor Gaidar
98. Neil Gershenfeld
99. Alain Finkielkraut
100. Ian Buruma
 
Last edited:

Niloufar

Football Legend
Oct 19, 2002
29,626
23
#2
LOL!! Abdolkarim Soroush rated higher than Noam Chomsky, Kasparov,Shirin Ebadi, etc?!LOOOL
wanna know what the voters were sniffing..

Robert Fisk name is missing from this list.
 
Last edited:

Behrooz_C

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2005
16,651
1,566
A small island west of Africa
#3
LOL!! Abdolkarim Soroush rated higher than Noam Chomsky, Kasparov,Shirin Ebadi, etc?!LOOOL
wanna know what the voters were sniffing..

Robert Fisk name is missing from this list.
Why do you have such a low opinion of Dr Soroush?
And yes he SHOULD be above Ebadi.
It's not so surprising to find Dr Soroush above a schizophrenic conspiracy theorist and a former chess player.
 

Niloufar

Football Legend
Oct 19, 2002
29,626
23
#4
Why do you have such a low opinion of Dr Soroush?
And yes he SHOULD be above Ebadi.
It's not so surprising to find Dr Soroush above a schizophrenic conspiracy theorist and a former chess player.
what has Dr Soroush done for his country vs Ebadi? well except rosy talks of what Islam looks like in his mind, as opposed to what it really is!!

Also are u calling Noam Chomsky a schizophrenic conspiracy theorist?!
 

Sabzi

Bench Warmer
Oct 18, 2002
2,157
0
#5
I am pretty sure he meant Kasparov ;) He always blamed his many losses on conspiracy theories!!
 

Behrooz_C

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2005
16,651
1,566
A small island west of Africa
#6
what has Dr Soroush done for his country vs Ebadi? well except rosy talks of what Islam looks like in his mind, as opposed to what it really is!!

Also are u calling Noam Chomsky a schizophrenic conspiracy theorist?!
Nilou jan, why are you confusing things?
You ask what Soroush has done for her country vs Ebadi!!!
Perhaps you didn't understand the thread in the first place, but the topic is NOT about people who have done something for their country. Read it again. It's about 'intellectualism'.
Whatever Ebadi has done is great and we are proud of her. But it's in a different category to intellectualism.
If we are talking about intellectual writings on Islam then you can't compare Ebadi because she doesn't have the knowledge. If we are talking about law and defending women's rights then Soroush doesn't have the credentials.

But we are talking about intellectuals here. Besides, she is only 3 places down so it was probably arbitrary.
 

Fatso

Captain
Oct 1, 2004
8,122
205
#8
LOL!! Abdolkarim Soroush rated higher than Noam Chomsky, Kasparov,Shirin Ebadi, etc?!LOOOL
wanna know what the voters were sniffing..

Robert Fisk name is missing from this list.
Have you read Soroush's new stuff? It is nothing at all like you would expect.
 

Flint

Legionnaire
Jan 28, 2006
7,016
0
United States
#9
Soroush was the architect of the "cultural revolution". He sat on the shorayeh enghelabeh farhangi and and is singularly responsible for shutting down higher education in the country for years and wholesale purging of faculty and students for not thinking like him. No amount of writing is going to erase that kind of record. Exactly who has he inspired? Where is the movement that he has led? Who are his followers and what impact have they had on the political scene? There is none. Likes of him benefited when they were with IR and are benefitting when they are against IR, which I am not even sure he is.
 

Fatso

Captain
Oct 1, 2004
8,122
205
#10
Soroush was the architect of the "cultural revolution". He sat on the shorayeh enghelabeh farhangi and and is singularly responsible for shutting down higher education in the country for years and wholesale purging of faculty and students for not thinking like him. No amount of writing is going to erase that kind of record. Exactly who has he inspired? Where is the movement that he has led? Who are his followers and what impact have they had on the political scene? There is none. Likes of him benefited when they were with IR and are benefitting when they are against IR, which I am not even sure he is.
Who do you think should have been on the list?
 
Oct 18, 2002
7,941
0
704 Houser
#11
The problem with conservatives is that they cannot possibly fathom how somebody could have progression of thought because their own thinking processes are so limited and narrow.
 

Flint

Legionnaire
Jan 28, 2006
7,016
0
United States
#14
Who do you think should have been on the list?
I don't know. I don't get up in the morning worrying about who makes up the top 100 "intellectuals". I am sure they are accomplished people but I am sorry I have never heard of 90% of them. The few that I do know are not very exceptional. I can name half a dozen others that are in the sam league. And this notion about people "evolving", has he ever apologized for his actions in the early days of IR or does he count those writings as part of his "intellectual" credentials? Ideologues of the early years of IR who helped frame the republic are liable for a lot of human sufferings.
 
Oct 18, 2002
7,941
0
704 Houser
#17
This applies to all ideologues, both on the left and the right.
True, but more so with conservatives, because by their very nature they want to conserve an old order, status quo, religion or something of that sort. There is a little more flexibility on left. Specially among those who believe in constructivism.
 
May 21, 2003
496
0
#18
Flint and Farsi Zaban get my vote to be on that list.

Unfortunately this North American culture of "Top # lists", "Quarterly Goals", "Percentage Calculations(from totals sometimes less than 10!!!)" and "Cutting corners to save costs" has completely destroyed what this part of the world once stood for(Progress).
 

Niloufar

Football Legend
Oct 19, 2002
29,626
23
#19
Nilou jan, why are you confusing things?
You ask what Soroush has done for her country vs Ebadi!!!
Perhaps you didn't understand the thread in the first place, but the topic is NOT about people who have done something for their country. Read it again. It's about 'intellectualism'.
Whatever Ebadi has done is great and we are proud of her. But it's in a different category to intellectualism.
If we are talking about intellectual writings on Islam then you can't compare Ebadi because she doesn't have the knowledge. If we are talking about law and defending women's rights then Soroush doesn't have the credentials.

But we are talking about intellectuals here. Besides, she is only 3 places down so it was probably arbitrary.
well thats the thing. seems like anyone who had something NEW to offer in his/her writing is considered "Intellectual" in this list! intellectual or not!

Soroush doesnt discuss ideology, but rather fabrication of reality. and really, whoever reads these people's books and articles, would agree I think that Soroush can NOT possibly be rated more intellectual than Noam Chomsky.
like really what they were thinking?!