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Achebe, Soyinka among world's top 100 intellectuals
TWO Nigerian writers, Prof. Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka are among those jostling for the top five positions of the 100 leading public intellectuals.
Besides the two from Nigeria, other African countries also have nominees in the list, which is grouped by name, occupation and country.
These include South African novelist and Nobel Laureate, J.M. Coetzee; Somali Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a politician, who lives in the Netherlands; Egyptian cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who lives in Qatar; Florence Wambugu, plant pathologist from Kenya and her compatriot, political scientist, Ali Mazrui.
While Achebe is credited as the father of modern African literature with his novel, Things Fall Apart, regarded as a classic of all time, Soyinka is the first African Nobel Laureate in literature.
Foreign Policy, founded in 1970 by Samuel Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel, and now published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., is the premier, award-winning magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas.
Its mission, the magazine writes on its web site, "is to explain how the world works-in particular, how the process of global integration is reshaping nations, institutions, cultures, and, more fundamentally, our daily lives."
In releasing the list, the publication asked, "Who are the world's leading public intellectuals? FP and Britain's Prospect magazine would like to know who you think makes the cut. We've selected our top 100, and want you to vote for your top five. If you don't see a name that you think deserves top honors, include them as a write-in candidate. Voting closes October 10, and the results will be posted the following month."
Announcing the criteria for the listing, the magazine said, "The irony of this "thinkers" list is that it does not bear thinking about too closely. The problems of definition and judgment that it involves would discourage more rigorous souls. But some criteria must be spelled out. What is a public intellectual? Someone who has shown distinction in their own field along with the ability to communicate ideas and influence debate outside of it.
"Candidates must have been alive, and still active in public life (though many on this list have past their prime). Such criteria ruled out the likes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Milton Friedman, who would have been automatic inclusions 20 or so years ago. This list is about public influence, not intrinsic achievement. And that is where things get really tricky. Judging influence is hard enough inside one's own culture, but when you are peering across cultures and languages, the problem becomes far harder. Obviously our list of 100 has been influenced by where most of us sit, in the English-speaking West," the magazine stated.
"We tried to avoid the "box ticking" problem of having x Chinese, y economists and z under-50s. But we have also tried to give due weight to the important thinkers in all the main intellectual disciplines and centres of population. We also tried to ensure that all names on the list are influential in at least a few countries in their region, if not the entire globe. We may not have succeeded in following all these rules to the letter, but for those of you irritated by our choices, there is a small safety valve-a write-in vote that allows you to nominate a name that wasn't included on our list - Prospect and Foreign Policy"
Dedicated to reaching a broad, non-specialised audience that recognises that what happens "there" matters "here," and vice versa, FP says.
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