The world's top public intellectuals...

Foreign Policy and Prospect have released the results of their joint poll asking who are the world's top public intellectuals.

Of the top ten, all ten are Muslims and write about Islamic issues.

The twenty-first century will be profoundly shaped by developments in the Islamic world, but I think this result overeggs the pudding, as the British would say. A product of ballot-box stuffing perhaps?

Foreign Policy admitted as much in its summary of the results:

...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.

In any case, this confirms my readers' suspicions that this vote was a pointless exercise. I'm inclined to agree, and not just because of the absence of a single Japanese from the list of nominees (although Foreign Policy's Minxin Pei insisted that Funabashi Yoichi should have made the list). It's interesting that despite the much-vaunted rise of (East) Asia, the only East Asian in the top twenty is from India (Amartya Sen), whose credentials as an East Asian country some might question despite its membership in the East Asia Summit.

What does this list tell us aside from which intellectuals are best at mobilizing their supporters? (There's something about the combination of "intellectuals" and "mobilizing their supporters" that doesn't sit right with me.)

The world's top public intellectual

Voting is open in Foreign Policy magazine and Prospect magazine's contest to choose the world's top public intellectual.

The magazines chose a list of the top 100, available here, on the basis of the following criteria: "Although the men and women on this list are some of the world’s most sophisticated thinkers, the criteria to make the list could not be more simple. Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country."

Sixty-six are from North America or Europe. Not one is from Japan. The last time FP/Prospect conducted this survey, Ohmae Kenichi and Ishihara Shintaro were included in the top 100, at 97 and 100 respectively. Is Japan really so far removed from global intellectual currents that not one Japanese merits inclusion on this list? I suppose that English ability might have something to do with it: how else does a public intellectual "influence wider debate...beyond the borders of their own country" today than by being a proficient or fluent English speaker?

Beyond that, another point that many on the list have in common is an interest in regional, transnational, and global problems. Japanese public discourse, however, tends to be inward focused, meaning that Japanese public intellectuals make their names discussing Japan's problems, often looking at international problems solely in terms of how they affect Japan.

Part of it too may be selection bias on the part of FP and Prospect. India and China combined for ten of the 100, reflecting the focus of global media on the two Asian giants. But does that translate into influence for its public intellectuals?

I urge you all to choose a Japanese public intellectual (Oe Kenzaburo, Murakami Haruki, Funabashi Yoichi, whoever) as your write-in vote.