Foreign Policy has a list of the 100 Top Public Intellectuals. To add a dash of democracy to their enterprise, you can vote for your favorite five.
Most of the names, I'm sorry to say, were unknown to me, and, of the ones with which I was familiar, some selections were...uhm...curious. General Petraeus and Christopher Hitchens are public intellectuals? Thomas Friedman is a smart-enough guy, I guess, but he keeps saying that "another six months" will tell the tale in Iraq, and he's been saying that for five years now. Pope Benedict I can see--in fact, that's a good choice. Richard Dawkins may be a great biologist, but he has no understanding of Christianity.
Nice to see Paul Krugman, Al Gore, and Vaclav Havel on the list though.
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